Inertial particle's motion in geophysical fluid flows
Themistoklis Sapsis, George Haller
We derive a general reduced-order equation for the asymptotic motion of finite-size particles in unsteady fluid flows in a rotating frame. Our inertial equation is a small perturbation of passive fluid advection on a globally attracting slow manifold. Use of the inertial equation enables us to extract Lagrangian coherent structures for inertial particles motion in geophysical fluid flows. We illustrate these results on inertial particle motion in the three dimensional unsteady flow field of a hurricane. The dataset used is a simulation of the hurricane Isabel.