Imperial College London
Alternate

ProfessorPavelBerloff

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Mathematics

Professor in Applied Mathematics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 9662p.berloff Website

 
 
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Location

 

745Huxley BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Berloff:2019:10.1103/PhysRevE.100.063108,
author = {Berloff, P},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevE.100.063108},
journal = {Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics},
pages = {1--15},
title = {Clustering of floating tracers in weakly divergent velocity fields},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.063108},
volume = {100},
year = {2019}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - This work deals with buoyant tracers floating at the ocean surface, where the geostrophic velocitycomponent is 2D and rotational (non-divergent), and the ageostrophic component can containcomparable in size rotational and potential (divergent) contributions. We consider a randomkinematic flow model and study the process of clustering, that is, aggregation of the floatingtracer in localized spatial patches. In the large-time limit, and in the cases of strongly and weaklydivergent flows, the existing analytical theory predicts the process of exponential clustering, whichis the emergence of spatial singularities containing all the available tracer. Here, we confirm thisanalytical prediction, in numerical model solutions spanning different combinations of rotationaland potential surface velocity components, and report that exponential clustering persists evenin weakly divergent flows, however, at significantly slower rates. For a wide range of parameters,we analyzed not only the exponential clustering, but also the other type of tracer aggregation,referred to as fragmentation clustering, as well as the coarse-graining effects on clustering. For thepresented analyses we considered ensembles of Lagrangian particles, and introduced and appliedthe statistical topography methodology.
AU  - Berloff,P
DO  - 10.1103/PhysRevE.100.063108
EP  - 15
PY  - 2019///
SN  - 1539-3755
SP  - 1
TI  - Clustering of floating tracers in weakly divergent velocity fields
T2  - Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.063108
UR  - https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.063108
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/75499
VL  - 100
ER  -
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