Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-17 Thread Marcus Daniels
Some people seem to believe that electrons can change their behavior if they 
happen to be in a human brain but not if in a canine brain.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 10:16 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

Right. But that's a reduction to the infinite past or causa prima fallacy. It's 
perfectly fine to confine the universe of discourse to "recent past" or 
"nearby" and talk about proximal causes. Even though the physical system is 
some god-like ultimate cause, it's not merely convenient but efficient and more 
effective to talk about downward cause. We even have clearly defined 
mathematical methods for decoupling hierarchies of scale.

Arguing about the difference between a convenient fiction and Ultimate Reality 
is the domain of monks and priests.

On 5/16/24 10:02, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> The bias is emergent from the physical system.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 9:52 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause
> 
> How about "downward biasing"? Is that less ridicul[ous|e-deserving]? If I'm a 
> high order Markov process and my historicity heavily biases me toward a 
> subspace of behaviors, isn't that reasonable labeled "downward causation"?
> 
> On 5/16/24 08:32, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I'd like to take a moment to ridicule the notion of downward causality as 
>> I'm reading this.  


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Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-16 Thread Marcus Daniels
The bias is emergent from the physical system.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 9:52 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

How about "downward biasing"? Is that less ridicul[ous|e-deserving]? If I'm a 
high order Markov process and my historicity heavily biases me toward a 
subspace of behaviors, isn't that reasonable labeled "downward causation"?

On 5/16/24 08:32, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I'd like to take a moment to ridicule the notion of downward causality as I'm 
> reading this.  

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-16 Thread glen

How about "downward biasing"? Is that less ridicul[ous|e-deserving]? If I'm a high order 
Markov process and my historicity heavily biases me toward a subspace of behaviors, isn't that 
reasonable labeled "downward causation"?

On 5/16/24 08:32, Marcus Daniels wrote:

I'd like to take a moment to ridicule the notion of downward causality as I'm 
reading this.  


--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-16 Thread Nicholas Thompson
I THINK MY OUTBOX MAY HAVE GAGGED ON THIS, SO HERE IT IS AGAIN.  IT DOES
NOT TAKE ACCOUNT OF GLEN'S COMMENTS.   HI, GLEN:

Hi David, great to hear from you! When looking at animals, communicate
behavior, we look at the contingencies between the things that they do.
Those contingencies can be both simple and complex. They can be temporally
contingent or temporally far apart. Basically, we are asking the
information theoretical question: how does my behavior constrain your
behavior and givev your behavior, my future behavior, etc.

Based as I am in the purity of absolute ignorance, I imagine that this is
what LLM are doing with language. And just as I suspect that there is no
meaning in animal behavior other than alterations of contingencies, I
suspect that there is no meeting and speech or writing that is not in the
contingencies amongst the words. This is I think where monism ends up. All
signs are to other signs.


I too, miss our conversations. I will try to come on around 11 mountain
time to Virtual friam To say hello.
On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 1:10 PM Prof David West 
wrote:

> Nick,
>
> I hesitate to respond to your post because:
>
> 1) my interest in the weather is nominal, although I am bemused that here
> in St. Paul MN, we had more 50+ degrees in the December-February time frame
> than below 0 days (almost three times as many). Most unusual.
>
> 2) the response I wish to make is marginally related to the theme of your
> recent communications.
>
> But, you said, "*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?"*
>
> To which I must respond, *Why do so many insist that programs capable of
> emulating the most trivial of human abilities are "intelligent?"  *Or the
> inverse, *reducing humanity to the latest clever trick performed by a
> machine?*
>
> LLM versions of AI are exemplars of the Mechanical Turk—whatever
> "intelligence" they exhibit is directly and solely derivative of the human
> intelligence of "LLM Tutors" and "Prompt Engineers." Both are six-figure
> salary professions that arose in the last year.
>
> davew
> (personal note: I sorely miss the conversations we once enjoyed, both in
> person in Santa Fe and online.)
>
> On Tue, May 14, 2024, at 2:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> 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 

Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-16 Thread Marcus Daniels
I'd like to take a moment to ridicule the notion of downward causality as I'm 
reading this.  

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2024 8:01 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

I suppose the problem is that LLMs aren't really about language at all. They're 
about the "rolling up" of sequential data into a lossy memory device that can 
later be queried for those (somewhat mutated) memories. Those sequential 
streams are of different types (vision, hearing, touch, etc.), all of which can 
be memorized by "LLMs", much the same way various streams are memorized and 
recalled by an ecology of autocatalytic cycles in living systems.

The analogy breaks down both structurally (DNA, RNA, autocatalysis, etc. are 
different from the transformer architecture) and behaviorally (multidimensional 
stimulus-response vs aspect-oriented reinforcement learning). But when 
considering "life as it could be", Nick's right to consider the analogy.

I suppose the most important reason I don't care to encourage the flippant 
interaction with cloud-based bots like GPT has to do with the part of the 
structural breakdown in energetics. In line with the skeptical aphorism 
"exceptional claims require exceptional evidence", exceptional "intelligence" 
requires exceptional energetics. Living systems have found (through an ecology 
of ACs) an exceptional way to produce and maintain themselves. Sequential 
learning transformers also have an exceptional way of extracing energy from the 
world, massive world-destroying data centers. From 50k feet, it's the mainframe 
vs. the personal computer all over again. DaveW's liberal sensibility that True 
computation happens more in the leaves, less in the hubs, aligns with life as 
we know it, an exquisite composition of energy processors from the very tiny to 
the very large. The massive energy centralization mechanism is fragile and 
bears little resemblance to life as we know it.


On 5/15/24 12:16, Prof David West wrote:
> Nick,
> 
> I hesitate to respond to your post because:
> 
> 1) my interest in the weather is nominal, although I am bemused that here in 
> St. Paul MN, we had more 50+ degrees in the December-February time frame than 
> below 0 days (almost three times as many). Most unusual.
> 
> 2) the response I wish to make is marginally related to the theme of your 
> recent communications.
> 
> But, you said, "/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?"/
> 
> To which I must respond, /Why do so many insist that programs capable 
> of emulating the most trivial of human abilities are "intelligent?" 
> /Or the inverse, /reducing humanity to the latest clever trick 
> performed by a machine?/
> 
> LLM versions of AI are exemplars of the Mechanical Turk—whatever 
> "intelligence" they exhibit is directly and solely derivative of the human 
> intelligence of "LLM Tutors" and "Prompt Engineers." Both are six-figure 
> salary professions that arose in the last year.
> 
> davew
> (personal note: I sorely miss the conversations we once enjoyed, both 
> in person in Santa Fe and online.)
> 
> On Tue, May 14, 2024, at 2:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> 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 weat

Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-16 Thread glen

I suppose the problem is that LLMs aren't really about language at all. They're about the 
"rolling up" of sequential data into a lossy memory device that can later be queried for 
those (somewhat mutated) memories. Those sequential streams are of different types (vision, 
hearing, touch, etc.), all of which can be memorized by "LLMs", much the same way various 
streams are memorized and recalled by an ecology of autocatalytic cycles in living systems.

The analogy breaks down both structurally (DNA, RNA, autocatalysis, etc. are different 
from the transformer architecture) and behaviorally (multidimensional stimulus-response 
vs aspect-oriented reinforcement learning). But when considering "life as it could 
be", Nick's right to consider the analogy.

I suppose the most important reason I don't care to encourage the flippant interaction with 
cloud-based bots like GPT has to do with the part of the structural breakdown in energetics. In 
line with the skeptical aphorism "exceptional claims require exceptional evidence", 
exceptional "intelligence" requires exceptional energetics. Living systems have found 
(through an ecology of ACs) an exceptional way to produce and maintain themselves. Sequential 
learning transformers also have an exceptional way of extracing energy from the world, massive 
world-destroying data centers. From 50k feet, it's the mainframe vs. the personal computer all over 
again. DaveW's liberal sensibility that True computation happens more in the leaves, less in the 
hubs, aligns with life as we know it, an exquisite composition of energy processors from the very 
tiny to the very large. The massive energy centralization mechanism is fragile and bears little 
resemblance to life as we know it.


On 5/15/24 12:16, Prof David West wrote:

Nick,

I hesitate to respond to your post because:

1) my interest in the weather is nominal, although I am bemused that here in 
St. Paul MN, we had more 50+ degrees in the December-February time frame than 
below 0 days (almost three times as many). Most unusual.

2) the response I wish to make is marginally related to the theme of your 
recent communications.

But, you said, "/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?"/

To which I must respond, /Why do so many insist that programs capable of emulating the 
most trivial of human abilities are "intelligent?" /Or the inverse, /reducing 
humanity to the latest clever trick performed by a machine?/

LLM versions of AI are exemplars of the Mechanical Turk—whatever "intelligence" they exhibit is 
directly and solely derivative of the human intelligence of "LLM Tutors" and "Prompt 
Engineers." Both are six-figure salary professions that arose in the last year.

davew
(personal note: I sorely miss the conversations we once enjoyed, both in person 
in Santa Fe and online.)

On Tue, May 14, 2024, at 2:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

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 

Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-15 Thread Prof David West
Nick,

I hesitate to respond to your post because:

1) my interest in the weather is nominal, although I am bemused that here in 
St. Paul MN, we had more 50+ degrees in the December-February time frame than 
below 0 days (almost three times as many). Most unusual.

2) the response I wish to make is marginally related to the theme of your 
recent communications.

But, you said, "*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?"*

To which I must respond, *Why do so many insist that programs capable of 
emulating the most trivial of human abilities are "intelligent?"  *Or the 
inverse, *reducing humanity to the latest clever trick performed by a machine?*

LLM versions of AI are exemplars of the Mechanical Turk—whatever "intelligence" 
they exhibit is directly and solely derivative of the human intelligence of 
"LLM Tutors" and "Prompt Engineers." Both are six-figure salary professions 
that arose in the last year.

davew
(personal note: I sorely miss the conversations we once enjoyed, both in person 
in Santa Fe and online.)

On Tue, May 14, 2024, at 2:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> 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  
> 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 

Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-05-14 Thread Nicholas Thompson
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 
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
> 

Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-04-14 Thread Stephen Guerin
Portrait of a weather watcher:

As Nick is trying to model Stability and Diffusion, I had Stable Diffusion
try to model Nick. :-)

[image: 20240414_184733.jpg]

Aya my previous post got html grabled as HTML.  Thanks Gary for pointing
that out off-list.




On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 12:18 PM Stephen Guerin 
wrote:

> Portrait of a Weather Watcher
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 13, 2024, 12:05 PM Stephen Guerin 
> 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 
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>>>
>>> Clark University,
>>>
>>> nthomp...@clarku.edu
>>>
>>>
>>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity 

Re: [FRIAM] Potential Vorticity and the Dynamic Tropopause

2024-04-13 Thread Stephen Guerin
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 
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
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>
> Clark University,
>
> nthomp...@clarku.edu
>
>
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
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