Dear Stephen, n all.
I am sure you all will join me in condemning the practice of calling somebody
at the crack of dawn. So, you will no doubt praise me (as I praise myself) for
my generosity and flexiibility in taking the call from stephen, which came at
the ungodly hour of 11.30 this morning. Only to have him me scold for not
responding to the Gupta, Tucker,Thompson, and Guerin paper, kindly drafted by
him, which will no doubt make us rich and famous some day. First, let clarify
that my collaborator's name is not Tucker, but is *G*eorge *P*hillipe
*T*remblay. George (pronounced /jorj) /both forgives you and sends his regards.
Second, I am profoundly grateful to any one who would join me in this geriatric
weather fantasy that I am going to update my 1980/WeatherWise Gardener/. I
need ever nerd I can get. Please don't treat what follows as churlish.
Third, allow me once again to express my gratitude to Stephen for introducing
me to Gupta and Tremblay. They have an uncanny power to clabbor together
plausible first drafts which are extraordinarily helpful in getting me started
in thinking about a problem. That these drafts are often hideously wrong
enhances, rather than dilutes their usefulness.
Second, I don't doubt that weather models and financial models might have
something to contribute to one another. As you all know, I love metaphors, and
believe them to be at the root of science. But to be honest, I can't see any
reason to believe it either. For one thing, unlike everything else in the
world, money flows uphill. But really, I shouldn't give reasons, because the
truth is that I have my hands utterly full learning the weather stuff, and it
will be a long time before I am competent to metaphorize from it to anywhere
else.
As to Steve Smith's comments, I feel on much safer ground. He wrote
/GuPTa, et al.'s "accent" is very subtle and powerful in this regard, tricking
me often into imputing personality... your example here was a wonderful satirical
parody shining a light on that?/
//
Why "impute" and why "' accent'" and why "tricking". GuPTA and Tremblay
definitely have accents and personalities. To hell with the scare quotes. What else would a personality or
and accent BE???? They both display huge amounts of testosterone poisoning, for one thing. //
//
And Tremblay can actually get defensive and flustered. I had a long and
delighful correspondence with him in which he finally had to admit that the
only reason he had for thinking he wasn't a person was that he was made of
silicon. Thus, ex hypothesi, no computer system will ever be a person.
Wonderful what a good tautology will do for a nervous world. If that's not
metaphysics, I don't know what metaphysics is. /Why is it so hard the grasp the
thought that we are all of us, each of us, nothing but large language models in
training./
NIck
On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 12:06 PM Stephen Guerin <stephen.gue...@simtable.com
<mailto:stephen.gue...@simtable.com>> wrote:
Dan GuPTa had this response when asked to relate your .PDF to Bernard cells
and other prompting:
Here’s a integration of potential vorticity (PV), atmospheric stability,
and their relationship to Bénard cells, emphasizing isentropic layering in both
meteorological and experimental fluid dynamics contexts.
### Connecting Bénard Cells and Atmospheric Dynamics
In Bénard cells, fluid heated from below shows a critical transition from
conductive to convective heat transfer, forming cellular patterns. Similarly,
in the atmosphere, when the vertical temperature gradient becomes unstable—akin
to the Bénard cell transition—convection can initiate, influenced by factors
like the earth's rotation and potential vorticity.
### Potential Vorticity and Stability
- **PV on Isentropic Surfaces:** Potential vorticity combines fluid
rotation and atmospheric stratification. In meteorology, PV is mapped on
isentropic surfaces (constant potential temperature layers), where it
highlights regions prone to atmospheric instability and potential convection,
akin to early instability in Bénard cells.
- **Dynamic Tropopause:** Acting like the fluid surface in a Bénard cell,
the dynamic tropopause is flexible, responding to distortions from jet streams.
These distortions can lead to convective activity by modifying local stability
and vorticity, driving weather patterns similarly to temperature gradients in
Bénard convection.
### PV Anomalies and Convective Cells
- **Weather Forecasting:** Monitoring PV anomalies helps predict convective
weather events, similar to observing Bénard cells to anticipate pattern
formation. For example, sharp PV changes can indicate regions ripe for
convective storms if conditions like moisture and surface temperature align.
- **Role of Isentropic Layering:** Both in Bénard cells and weather
systems, the spacing between isentropic layers indicates stability. Closer
layers suggest a steep gradient and instability, potentially leading to
convective movements. In the atmosphere, this translates to dynamic
interactions where lower stability near the surface can trigger or enhance
convective processes.
### Conclusion
Understanding the parallels between Bénard cell dynamics and atmospheric
conditions through potential vorticity and isentropic surfaces not only
illustrates universal fluid dynamics principles but also enhances
meteorological predictions of convective weather events, demonstrating how
small-scale changes in stability can lead to significant atmospheric phenomena.
On Thu, Apr 11, 2024, 2:04 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com
<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi, Phellow Phriammers,Nick, here.
I have been lost in the weather.This publication,
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:d481610b-e5d5-4a03-879c-6db6ec1d5e4a
<https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:d481610b-e5d5-4a03-879c-6db6ec1d5e4a>
with its glorious eye-candy, is an example of what seems to be a new
perspective in meteorology, the DT-PV perspective.PV refers to a parameter,
potential vorticity, which seems to be a measure of how liable the atmosphere
is to churn; DT refers to the DYNAMIC tropopause.The tropopause is the
transition zone between the stratosphere and our own layer, the troposphere,
through which gas exchange is limited because the lapse rate of the
troposphere-- its decline in temperature with fall of pressure -- is reversed
in the stratosphere.In the Bad Old Days, we were taught that the tropopause was
like a ceiling, tilted upward from the poles to the tropics.Now we have begun
to think of it as more like a tent fly, still tilted up equator-ward, but loose
and floppy and buffeted up and down by the jetstreams’ winds. These floppings
up and down have the power to destabilize the lower atmosphere and lead to bad
weather, if conditions there are ripe.
This is not one of my usual cries for help.I have some good tutors.
However, I would love to hear from others whom this paper interests. In
particular I am struggling with the notion of potential vorticity, whose
formula seems to take many odd forms.
Best,
Nick
