Stochastic and deterministic kinetic energy backscatter parameterizations for simulation of the two-dimensional turbulence

Abstract

Abstract The problem of modelling 2D isotropic turbulence in a periodic rectangular domain excited by the forcing pattern of prescribed spatial scale is considered. This setting could be viewed as the simplest analogue of the large scale quasi-2D circulation of the ocean and the atmosphere. Since the direct numerical simulation (DNS) of this problem is usually not possible due to the high computational costs we explore several possibilities to construct coarse approximation models and corresponding subgrid closures (deterministic or stochastic). The necessity of subgrid closures is especially important when the forcing scale is close to the cutoff scale of the coarse model that leads to the significant weakening of the inverse energy cascade and large scale component of the system dynamics. The construction of closures is based on the a priori analysis of the DNS solution and takes into account the form of a spatial approximation scheme used in a particular coarse model. We show that the statistics of a coarse model could be significantly improved provided a proper combination of deterministic and stochastic closures is used. As a result we are able to restore the shape of the energy spectra of the model. In addition the lagged auto correlations of the model solution as well as its sensitivity to external perturbations fit the characteristics of the DNS model much better.