FLUID EXCHANGE ACROSS A MEANDERING JET WITH QUASI-PERIODIC VARIABILITY

In this paper, the motion of fluid parcels in the two-dimensional kine matic model of a meandering jet developed by Bower and Samelson is stu died. The earlier work is extended by considering quasiperiodic spatio temporal variability in a reference frame moving with the phase speed of the meander. This necessitates the introduction of recently develop ed techniques in dynamical systems theory for analyzing transport in v elocity fields with quasiperiodic variability. A detailed comparison b etween exchange for variability with one and two independent frequenci es is given, and it is shown that the exchange rates may be very diffe rent for periodic and quasiperiodic variability.