Remarks on Charney's note on geostropic turbulence

Abstract

Charney in 1971 generalized results for two-dimensional (2D) turbulence to quasigeostrophic (QG) turbulence and obtained two results that have important implications for the atmosphere. The first is an attempt to prove that, similar to 2D turbulence, energy in QG turbulence goes only upscale in the net. The second is a demonstration that 3D QG motion in terms of a 3D wavenumber in a stretched coordinate is isomorphic to 2D turbulence. Charney's proofs are shown here to be problematic.