Energy and potential enstrophy flux constraints in quasi-geostrophic models

Abstract

We investigate an inequality constraining the energy and potential enstrophy flux spectra in two-layer and multi-layer quasi-geostrophic models. Its physical significance is that it can diagnose whether any given multi-layer model that allows co-existing downscale cascades of energy and potential enstrophy can allow the downscale energy flux to become large enough to yield a mixed energy spectrum where the dominant $k^{-3}$ scaling is overtaken by a subdominant $k^{-5/3}$ contribution beyond a transition wavenumber $k_t$ situated in the inertial range. The validity of the flux inequality implies that this scaling transition cannot occur within the inertial range, whereas a violation of the flux inequality beyond some wavenumber $k_t$ implies the existence of a scaling transition near that wavenumber. This flux inequality holds unconditionally in two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence, however, it is far from obvious that it continues to hold in multi-layer quasi-geostrophic models, because the dissipation rate spectra for energy and potential enstrophy no longer relate in a trivial way, as in two-dimensional Navier-Stokes. We derive the general form of the energy and potential enstrophy dissipation rate spectra for a generalized symmetrically coupled multi-layer model. From this result, we prove that in a symmetrically coupled multi-layer quasi-geostrophic model, where the dissipation terms for each layer consist of the same Fourier-diagonal linear operator applied on the streamfunction field of only the same layer, the flux inequality continues to hold. It follows that a necessary condition to violate the flux inequality is the use of asymmetric dissipation where different operators are used on different layers. etc.