Energy Spectra of Meso-Scale Turbulence Along and Across the Jet Stream

Abstract

The wind velocities measured by an aircraft flying parallel and perpendicular to jet streams (Project Jet Stream, 1956–1957) have been analyzed; a smoothing technique has been used to separate the meso-scale turbulence from the mean flow. Eulerian auto-correlation coefficients and energy spectra are computed for the longitudinal and transversal components of the horizontal wind velocities. The distributions of the auto-correlation coefficients and the energy spectra appear to be similar for both the longitudinal and transversal components of the velocities, whereas the corrected meso-scale energy spectrum increases with decreasing wave number and is approximately proportional to k⁻² in the range between 10⁻¹ cycles km⁻¹. An analysis is also made of the distribution of the Richardson number in a cross section perpendicular to the jet stream. A good relationship is found between the areas of turbulence and the regions of small Richardson number.