Outside the immediate subdiscipline of tropical cyclone physics, it is widely held that these vortices are a mode of organization of deep, moist convection. In this lecture, I will dispel that idea and show that TC-like vortices arise from thermodynamic disequilibrium between a fluid and a solid or liquid surface, a disequilibrium that arises from the discontinuity in radiative emissivities between gases and solids or liquids. They can only arise in full turbulent flows in which the lower boundary is thermodynamically “rough”, so that heat flow is rate limited by turbulence and not by molecular diffusion. Phase changes are not necessary. I will focus on the energetics and dynamics of tropical cyclone-like vortices.
By Geoffrey Vallis
By Luca Melzi
By Beatrice Pelloni
