A Hurricane For All Seasons

摘要

Atmospheric motions are built on vortices of all kinds. They span an enormity of time and space scales, from whirling leaves in a corner alley on a windy day, to tornadoes and hurricanes that destroy property and lives, to the polar jet's great ring that encircles the hemispheres. As succinctly stated by Hans Lugt in his classic text Vortex Flow in Nature and Technology,"rnVortices are ordered structures of fluid motion, which nature prefers over chaos in many situations." Vortices on Earth are not limited to the atmosphere, but occur throughout the world's oceans, and are part of the great convective stirrings within Earth's molten mantle.