Vertically Sheared Horizontal Flow-Forming Instability in Stratified Turbulence: Analytical Linear Stability Analysis of Statistical State Dynamics Equilibria

TL;DR

This paper uses statistical state dynamics to analytically study the formation of vertically sheared horizontal flows in stratified turbulence, revealing a universal instability mechanism similar to zonostrophic instability in planetary turbulence.

Contribution

It extends S3T analysis to stratified turbulence, demonstrating a common instability process underlying jet formation in both geostrophic and stratified systems.

Findings

VSHFs form via an instability analogous to zonostrophic instability.

The instability mechanism is similar in stratified and planetary turbulence.

Analytical formulation allows for perturbation stability analysis.

Abstract

Vertically banded zonal jets are frequently observed in weakly or non-rotating stratified turbulence, with the quasi-biennial oscillation in the equatorial stratosphere and the ocean's equatorial deep jets being two examples. Explaining the formation of jets in stratified turbulence is a fundamental problem in geophysical fluid dynamics. Statistical state dynamics (SSD) provides powerful methods for analyzing turbulent systems exhibiting emergent organization, such as banded jets. In SSD, dynamical equations are written directly for the evolution of the turbulence statistics, enabling direct analysis of the statistical interactions between the incoherent component of the turbulence and the coherent large-scale structure component that underlie jet formation. A second-order closure of SSD, known as S3T, has previously been applied to show that meridionally banded jets emerge in barotropic beta-plane turbulence via a statistical instability referred to as the zonostrophic instability. Two-dimensional Boussinesq turbulence provides a simple model of non-rotating stratified turbulence analogous to the beta-plane model of planetary turbulence. Jets known as vertically sheared horizontal flows (VSHFs) often emerge in simulations of Boussinesq turbulence, but their dynamics is not yet clearly understood. In this work S3T analysis of the zonostrophic instability is extended to study VSHF emergence in two-dimensional Boussinesq turbulence using an analytical formulation of S3T amenable to perturbation stability analysis. VSHFs are shown to form via an instability that is analogous in stratified turbulence to the zonostrophic instability in beta-plane turbulence. This instability is shown to be strikingly similar to the zonostrophic instability, suggesting that jet emergence in both geostrophic and non-rotating stratified turbulence may be understood as instances of the same generic phenomenon.