CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY How Does a Hurricane Start? The hurricane takes its name from the West Indian word huracan which means "big wind." Storms that occur over the Atlantic or the eastern Pacific Oceans are called hurricanes. Hurricanes are not just violent winds. They are giant, whirling storms that develop in a special way. Hurricanes form only in the tropics where extremely moist air and heat are concentrated over the ocean, near the equator. The water temperature must be at least 80o Fahrenheit both day and night. A wet season with increased rainfall begins in late spring and lasts to early autumn. This is the time of year when hurricanes develop. Evaporation of the warm water into the atmosphere over the ocean makes the air very moist. Winds blowing across the ocean in different directions begin to push masses of warm, moist air toward each other. This event is called convergence. When the air masses collide, the air in the centre starts to rise, forming an updraft. At high altitudes, the moist air of the updraft begins to cool and water droplets form. These water droplets form clouds. Large cumulonimbus clouds (i.e. thunder clouds), begin to grow and thunderstorms develop. More thunderstorms form as more convergence and updrafts occur. If the thunderstorms do not dissipate, they may start to gather together. This formation is called a tropical disturbance. Many more thunderstorms join the disturbance. This weather event becomes large enough to be influenced by forces created from the Earth's rotation. The tropical disturbance begins to swirl and becomes a vortex of thunderstorms. Updrafts are continuously pulling more air into the disturbance. When the winds begin to blow continuously at 23 miles per hour, the storm becomes a tropical depression. The tropical depression continues to gain power and becomes a tropical storm when the wind speed becomes 40 miles per hour. At any time, the disturbance, depression, or storm can run out of hot, moist air and weaken or die out. If it continues to gain strength and reaches 74 miles per hour we call it a hurricane.

Hurricanes have top wind speeds of at least 74 miles per hour, but wind speed can reach 180 miles per hour. The closer you are to the storm's centre, the faster the wind will be. The top wind speed will be reached within 60 miles from the centre of the hurricane. As you move away from the centre, wind speed is slower. At 300 miles from the centre, the wind speed may be only 18 miles per hour. The energy of a hurricane comes from the heat released when water vapour condenses to liquid water. The atmosphere above a tropical ocean is the only place enough warm, moist air is available to produce the energy necessary to create a hurricane. The movement of a hurricane is somewhat predictable. It is so large that it moves with the Earth's wind currents that surround it. These wind currents are very large and steady and don't change course abruptly. Therefore, hurricanes usually travel in one of these wind currents until they meet another wind current, then they may change direction. If a hurricane changes course, it could pass over the same area twice. Sometimes one of these storms stalls over an area for days. 1.2 MOTIVATION To study conditions in hurricanes and how it relates to fluid flow. 1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES The aim of this research is to discover the extent to which hurricanes are related to fluid mechanics At the end of this research, we should be able to: a) Have an in-depth insight on hurricanes b) Have an understanding of how hurricanes relate with fluid mechanics

1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The stated aim and objectives will be achieved by: a) Carrying out extensive studies on hurricanes. b) Extensively studying journals and related works on hurricanes. c) Researching on fluid mechanics and how it relates to the subject matter. d) Using.....formula....models....theory?????

1.5 CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEGE This research will help increase ones knowledge on fluid mechanics and how it relates to nature with special focus to hurricanes.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION The hurricane remains one of the outstanding enigmas of fluid dynamics. This is so, in part, because the phenomenon is comparatively difficult to observe and because no laboratory analogue has been discovered. To this it must be added that hurricanes have received surprisingly little attention from the theoretically inclined fluid dynamicist, perhaps owing to an understandable tendency to avoid problems that involve complex thermodynamics and lack laboratory analogues. Yet hurricanes involve a rich spectrum of fluid-dynamical processes, including rotating, stratified flow dynamics, boundary layers, convection, and airsea interaction; as such, they provide a wealth of interesting and consequential research problems. Hurricanes do massive amounts of damage to the east and gulf coast of North and Central America every year. The damage is principally due to very high winds (over 150 mph for the highest categories), rain, and the associated storm surge. The latter is caused by persistent winds piling water up in one region of the ocean. Generally, flooding associated with the storm surge and rain are the primary cause of death due to hurricanes. Tornadoes can also be spawned in outlying regions. Because of the slow translation of hurricanes and cyclones, it is particularly important to understand the dynamics of these global scale vortices. Nowadays, the projected path can be calculated and updated fairly quickly to provide adequate warning to shore communities, thanks to the work of meteorologists, atmospheric physicists, and other fluid mechanists. This situation contrasts with that of tornadoes which are much localized, they develop and move so quickly that path projections are useless. Vorticity is a measure of rotation in the atmosphere or spin in the air. If the spin is counter clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, it is called a vorticity cyclonic and given a positive value, if clockwise, it is called a vorticity anticyclone and given a negative value. The opposite conventions apply in the Southern Hemisphere. In forecasting large-scale weather events, one is concerned primarily with relative vorticity and focuses on the rotation of air

around a vertical axis, much like the rotation of a hurricane over the earths surface. The vorticity caused by the Carioles effect is another matter. Consider a large volume of air rotating around a common centre just as a very large wheel would spin around its axis. One component of the relative vorticity is due to its pure rotation. The greater the wind speed, V, in this circular motion and the smaller the radius of rotation, R, the greater the vorticity. The contribution toward relative vorticity from rotation alone is V/R. Because tornadoes have high wind speeds and nominal radii of only hundreds of meters, the vorticity associated with them is very high. Hurricanes have high winds, too, but the radius of rotation is greater, so their relative vorticity is less than for tornadoes. The association of low pressure and high vorticity with foul weather is a generalization that is quite often true. The most spectacular and violent examples of vortices in the atmosphere are tornadoes and hurricanes.

2.2. OBSERVATINS OF VRTEX SWIRLS IN HURRICANE EYE CLOUDS Mature hurricanes often have low-level stratus or stratocumulus cloud decks below the inversion level in their eyes, and it is not uncommon to find various vortical or swirling shapes embedded in these cloud decks.

An example of this phenomenon in Atlantic Hurricane Erin at 1515 UTC 11 September 2001 is shown below. At that time, the low clouds in the eye of Erin appeared as convoluted cloud streets that form an oxbow, northeast of the storm centre and an elliptical swirl west of centre. Regions between the cloud streets were relatively devoid of clouds. Also visible at that time [1115 eastern daylight time (EDT)] was a smoke and dust plume being adverted southward from the collapsed World Trade Centre buildings near the southern tip of Manhattan, New York. The swirling patterns in hurricane eye clouds can take on a variety of shapes, ranging from circles centred in the eye to convoluted patterns containing multiple swirls at varying positions in the eye. The various shapes seen in these storms suggest that coherent regions of vorticity were present in their eyes and that the spatial scales of the coherent regions of vorticity were smaller than the parent vortex (i.e., the hurricane inner core) in which they were embedded.

Such small-scale regions of vorticity are known as mesovortices, and their presence in hurricane eyes and eye walls has been widely documented. Figure 2 displays eye cloud patterns in western Pacific Super typhoon Ida (1958), western Pacific Super typhoon Yuri (1991), eastern Pacific Hurricane Emilia (199), Atlantic Hurricane Alberto (2000), western Pacific Typhoon Man-Yi (2001). The dominant pattern in the eye clouds of Man-Yi (Fig. 2f) was approximately circular with its centre nearly collocated with the eye centre, suggesting that the vorticity structures in the eyes of these storms were approximately Axisymmetric. Our interpretation of the relationship between flow patterns and stratiform cloud patterns assumes that the cloud lines are approximately parallel to local streamlines. Although there are situations in which stratiform cloud lines over general oceanic regions are aligned so as to be nearly perpendicular to local streamlines, this is not likely to be true here. Wind patterns in the neighbourhood of hurricane mesovortices can be inferred to be coincident with cloud patterns by using a combination of photographs. The relationship between cloud lines and streamlines in the hurricane eye is most likely that they are parallel in a manner analogous to the swirling features of von Krmn vortices that are sometimes evident in low-level marine stratiform clouds downwind of islands.

Figure 1 Moderate- Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite image of Atlantic hurricane Erin at1515 UTC 11 Sep, 2001.

The right inset shows a magnified image of convoluted clouds in the eye. The left inset shows a smoke and dust plume being carried southward from the collapsed World Trade Centre buildings, away from the populated island of Manhattan, in part by Erins surface flow.

Fig.2. Montage of images showing a variety of swirling patterns in hurricane eye cloud.

2.3 EYE (CYCLONE) The eye is a region of mostly calm weather at the centre of strong tropical cyclones. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area, typically 3065 km (20-40 miles) in diameter. It is surrounded by the eye wall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the second most severe weather occurs. The cyclone's lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye, and can be as much as 15% lower than the atmospheric pressure outside the storm.

In strong tropical cyclones, the eye is characterized by light winds and clear skies, surrounded on all sides by a towering, symmetric eye wall. In weaker tropical cyclones, the eye is less well-defined, and can be covered by the central dense overcast, which is an area of high, thick clouds that show up brightly on satellite imagery. Weaker or disorganized storms may also feature an eye wall that does not completely encircle the eye, or have an eye that features heavy rain. In all storms however, the eye is the location of the storm's minimum barometric pressure: the area where the atmospheric pressure at sea level is the lowest. 2.4 SINK VORTEX The spinup of the vortex is due to the stretching of water column that is rotating with the apparatus. The principle is analogous to the conservation of angular momentum, and it works as follows. For an incompressible, frictionless fluid, velocity integrated around a material circuit, called circulation, is a constant of motion. Circulation is what would be angular momentum for a rigid body, but here the shape of the circuit can change with time. Also, mass (volume) of a material tube is conserved following the fluid motion. Thus, the ratio of these two numbers is also a constant of motion. . In the limit of vanishing volume, this ratio approaches vorticity divided by the length of the tube. This quantity is known as

potential vorticity. In the case of a rotating fluid, vorticity is taken as the sum of the vorticity of the apparatus' rotation and the relative vorticity of fluid motion (2 + curl V) k, where , V, and k are the angular velocity vector of the apparatus (turntable, planet, etc.), fluid velocity, and local unit vector in the vertical, respectively. As the column of water is drained at the sink, it is stretched

downward, so the tube length h increases. To keep potential vorticity constant, vorticity needs to increase, so when > 0, positive (cyclonic) relative vorticity is spun up. However, if the

fluid is non-rotating and its vorticity is zero to begin with, then stretching does not create any relative vorticity, because potential vorticity remains zero whether the tube is stretched or not. In other words, the sink vortex feeds itself off of the pre-existing vorticity associated with the rotation of the tank

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 THEORY OF HURRICANES The same mechanism is at work in the growth and maintenance of a hurricane (The differences between water and air turn out to be inconsequential here.) as already discussed in chapter two. For a hurricane, release of latent heat of condensation during cloud formation causes intense buoyancy in the eye wall, which provides the vertical stretching of the tube. Hurricanes still need pre-existing vorticity to start spinning, that's why they do not form over the equator where the effective rotation of the planet (i.e., the rotation vector projected on the local vertical axis = 2 k) vanishes. In the Northern Hemisphere, the rotation of the planet is counter clockwise so the hurricanes also spin counter clockwise, as in the sink experiment above. Upon landfall, the supply of water vapour to the hurricane is cut off, so its intensity diminishes rapidly due to surface friction. This is similar to the vortex in the above experiment that is cut off from the sink after the drain valve is shut. The vortex that appears over the sink spins clockwise this time. Similarly, hurricanes in the Southern Hemisphere spin clockwise. 3.2 THE MATURE HURRICANE: A NATURAL CARNOT ENGINE About 80 rotating circulations, known generically as tropical cyclones, form over the tropical oceans each year. Of these, roughly 60% reach an intensity (maximum winds in excess of 32 m s- 1) that qualifies them as hurricanes, a term applied only in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. Here we use the term hurricane in place of the generic term tropical cyclone.

The mature hurricane may be idealized as an axisymmetric vortex in hydrostatic and rotational balance. The cyclonic azimuthal flow reaches its maximum intensity near the surface and decreases slowly upward, becoming anticyclones near the top of the storm, roughly 15 km above the surface. This flow configuration corresponds to a warm core structure with maximum temperature perturbations on isobaric surfaces well in excess of 10C highly concentrated at high levels near the centre of the vortex. The radius at which the azimuthal winds peak ranges from 10 to 100 km, near the surface and generally increases with height. Inside the radius of maximum winds, the core is nearly in solid-body rotation,

while outside the core the winds fall off gradually with radius, obeying approximately an r1/2 law. No low-level circulation can be detected outside a finite radius ranging from 100 to

1000 km. While the geometric size of hurricanes ranges over an order of magnitude, their intensity, as measured by Maximum wind speeds or central pressure deficit, bears no perceptible relation to their size. While axisymmetry is a good approximation for the cyclonic flow, the upper anticyclone is usually highly asymmetric, with the bulk of the flow confined to one or two anticyclonically curving jets.

3.2.1 The Axisymmetric Structure of the Mature Hurricane. Kleinschmidt in 1951 first recognized that the energy source of hurricanes resides in the thermodynamic disequilibrium between the tropical atmosphere and oceans. This is reflected not in an actual temperature difference between air and sea, which in the tropics is usually less than 1C, but rather in the under saturation of near-surface air. The evaporation of water transfers heat from the ocean, whose effective heat capacity is enormous in comparison with the overlying atmosphere. To bring the troposphere into thermodynamic equilibrium with the ocean would require the transfer of roughly 108 J m- 2 of energy from the ocean. The rate of transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere is a function of the surface wind speed.

Figure 3

Air begins spiralling toward the storm centre at Point a, acquiring entropy from the ocean surface at fixed temperature Ts. It then ascends adiabatically from point c, flowing out near the storm top to some large radius, denoted symbolically by point o. The excess entropy is

lost by export or by electromagnetic radiation to space between o and o at a much lower temperature to. The cycle is closed by integrating along an absolute vortex line between o and a. The curves c-o and o-a also represent surfaces of constant absolute angular momentum about the storms axis.

If the ocean were a flat surface, the transfer would increase linearly with wind speed, but the increasing roughness of the sea surface leads to a somewhat greater dependence on wind. The actual rate of heat transfer is a subject of much controversy and research. The dependence of the transfer rate on wind is the principal feedback mechanism that allows hurricanes to develop. In its essence, the hurricane may be thought of as a wind-induced surface heat exchange instability, in which increasing surface winds lead to increased heat transfer from the sea, this leads to intensification of the storm winds, and so on. The energy cycle of the mature hurricane has been idealized as a Carnot engine that converts heat energy extracted from the ocean to mechanical energy. In the steady state, this mechanical-energy generation balances frictional dissipation, most of which occurs at the air-sea interface. Carnots theorem may be easily derived from Bernoullis equation and the first law of thermodynamics. The former states that along streamlines or absolute vortex lines in a steady system,

Where: The vector velocity, The acceleration of gravity, The height above the surface, The specific volume, The pressure, The frictional force per unit mass,

An incremental distance along a streamline or absolute vortex line.

An energy equation may be derived by substituting from the first law of thermodynamics, which in a moist system may be written;

Where: the specific total entropy content of air (including the water vapor),

the heat capacity of air at constant pressure, the latent heat of vaporization, and the mass of water vapour per unit mass of air.

The above neglects the heat capacity of water substance and the effect of water on the density of an air-water vapour mixture

This can be integrated around a closed circuit, the first three branches of which are streamlines. The fourth branch is an absolute vortex line. Then

This illustrates that in the steady state, heating balances friction. Most of the heat input to a hurricane is from the sea surface. As air flows radially inward along the surface, its temperature is observed to be held nearly constant by a combination of turbulent fluxes and radiative transfer from the ocean. Thus, in the first branch, one has

Where:

The difference between the entropies of air near the storm centre and in the ambient environment.

The first law of thermodynamics can be used to derive the entropy, s (neglecting the heat capacity of water substance and other small terms):

Where R is the gas constant for air.

Then

Where the subscripts c and a, refer to quantities evaluated along the surface at the storm centre and at the starting point, respectively. The saturation of air near the storm centre limits the entropy increase to;

Where qc* is the saturation mixing ratio at the storm centre and is a function of pc and Ts. From an approximate integration of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, we have an excellent approximation;

In which Ts is expressed in degrees Celsius.

In the second leg of the Carnot cycle, air ascends within deep convective clouds in the eye wall of the storm and then flows out to large radius. It is important to note that when water vapour is properly included in the description of the thermodynamic state of the system, this leg is very nearly reversible and adiabatic, so that ds=0. Some researchers define dry entropy [without the last term in (6)] and are forced to deal with very large sources of dry entropy in the ascent region, where there is large conversion of latent to sensible heat. The problem with such an approach is that the adiabatic source is purely a function of the flow itself and cannot be properly regarded as external. Attempts to regard the condensation heat source as external lead to the oft-repeated statement that hurricanes are driven by condensation of water vapour, a view rather analogous to that of an engineer who proclaims that elevators are driven upward by the downward acceleration of counterweights. Such a view, though energetically correct, is conceptually awkward. It is far more natural to consider the elevator and its counterweight as a single system driven by a motor. Here we adopt a similar strategy by dealing with the most conserved thermodynamic variable available, the total specific entropy. The altitude that the outflow asymptotically approaches is determined by the requirement that it be neutrally buoyant with respect to the environment. That is, the temperature in the outflow blends smoothly into the ambient temperature profile without shocks. The ability of the ambient atmosphere to control the interior structure of the vortex through this requirement is consistent with the fact that hurricanes are subcritical vortices (i.e. internal gravity inertia waves may propagate inward against the outflow). In the third leg of the Carnot cycle, air descends slowly in the lower stratosphere, retaining a nearly constant temperature To while losing heat by electromagnetic radiation to space. In this leg, then,

Real hurricanes are open systems that continually exchange mass with their environments. Nonetheless, the Carnot cycle can be closed by integrating the Bernoulli equation along a fourth branch that is an absolute vortex line of the system, which is also a surface of constant absolute angular momentum about the storm centre. Since we are no longer following air parcels, the relationship implied by the first law of thermodynamics is not strictly valid. It has been shown, however, that there is little thermodynamic contribution from this last leg, owing to the convective neutrality of the ambient atmosphere. Thus adding (7) and (10) gives an expression for the frictional work from (4);

Most of the frictional energy loss in the cycle occurs in the surface boundary layer and at large radius in the outflow, where the airs original angular momentum must ultimately be restored. This latter loss is idealized as occurring at infinite radius. It may be estimated from conservation of absolute angular momentum (M) about the storm centre;

The loss of kinetic energy in the third branch of the cycle is then

(Assuming that V is zero at the beginning of the cycle).

The frictional loss in the boundary layer may be related to the radial pressure drop by integrating the Bernoulli equation (1) inward along the first branch:

Substituting (15) and (14) into (11) then gives;

With an upper bound, for

provided by (8).

The last term in (16) reflects the energy put into the upper anticyclone; this always detracts from the intensity of the surface cyclone, as reflected in the surface pressure deficit. The stipulation that in (P, /Pc) must be positive leads to a restriction on the magnitude of ra. Given r, p, qa, Ts, and To, a lower bound on Pc is obtained by using (8) [with (9)] in (16). Unless r is unusually large, it has little effect on estimate.

Figure 4 shows this lower bound (neglecting ra) as a function Ts and To, using a standard mean surface pressure p, and assuming an ambient near-surface relative humidity of 75%. One curiosity of this calculation is that there is no solution for sufficiently large T or small To. In this regime (the hypercane regime), the Carnot cycle becomes unstable owing to a very large heat input from isothermal expansion. The more intense the storm, the lower the central pressure giving greater isothermal heat input, which intensifies the storm, and so on. An estimate of the minimum central pressure pc from (16) using September climatological conditions is shown in Figure 3, together with locations and central pressures of the most intense hurricanes on record. Clearly, a few hurricanes reach the predicted upper bound on intensity, but the vast majority (not shown in Figure 3) does not. Two enigmas emerge from Figure 3; Given that the energy potential for hurricanes is large over much of the tropical oceans, why are hurricanes so rare? And even when a hurricane occurs, why do so few reach the theoretical upper bound on intensity?

Figure 4: The minimum sustainable central pressure (in millibars) as a function of sea surface temperature (Ts) and mean outflow temperature (To), assuming an ambient surface pressure of 1015 mbar and an ambient near-surface relative humidity (RH) of 75%.

CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

4.1 SUMMARY AND REMAINING PROBLEMS

The mature hurricane is a Carnot engine driven by the thermodynamic disequilibrium between the tropical oceans and atmosphere. Air spiraling radially inward in the boundary layer is brought closer to thermodynamic equilibrium with the ocean by large wind-induced heat fluxes; it then rises nearly (moist) adiabatically to great altitudes, where the excess heat exported or lost by electromagnetic radiation to space. The mechanical energy available from this cycle is a thermodynamic efficiency e, multiplied by the surface temperature and by the difference between the saturation entropy of the ocean surface (at the central pressure of the hurricane) and the undisturbed boundary-layer entropy. The efficiency is;

Where: TS is the sea-surface temperature To is the mean temperature at which heat is exported by or lost from the storms high-level outflow. Its typical magnitude is 1/3. While the energy source for mature hurricanes has been recognized since at least the time of Kleinschmidt (1951), controversy remains about the energetics and dynamics of hurricane genesis. Observational evidence and forecasting experience favour the idea that hurricanes result from finite amplitude instability. Weak disturbances are often observed to decay even under favourable environmental conditions, and hurricanes are after all, rare despite the nearly ubiquitous (i.e. present everywhere) presence of an energy reservoir. The resulting downdrafts import low-entropy air into the boundary layer at a rate that exceeds the enthalpy flux from the ocean surface. Intensification occurs when the entropy of the middle-tropospheric air has been raised enough to substantially weaken the low-entropy flux into the boundary layer by downdrafts. While these ideas are consistent with complex numerical simulations, they have yet to be systematically tested in real tropical cyclones.

Even if the reasons for the finite-amplitude nature of tropical cyclogenesis are correctly identified, the problem of genesis would remain as one of explaining the initiating disturbance. Complete finite amplitude theory of hurricanes could presumably specify the required characteristics of the initiating disturbances. In addition to the problem of genesis, several aspects of hurricane behaviour remain poorly understood. One possibility is that most hurricanes are limited by the cold water that they invariably mix upward from beneath the oceanic seasonal thermocline. Observed sea-surface temperature, changes are as large as 5C; only about 2.5C of cooling is needed to reverse the air-sea thermodynamic disequilibrium. Preliminary studies show that the induced cooling may indeed limit the intensity of many hurricanes, though a comprehensive simulation with a coupled ocean atmosphere model remains to be performed. The spiral bands of convective clouds that give hurricanes their characteristic appearance in satellite photographs are not well understood. Some strong hurricanes exhibit concentric eyewalls that undergo a characteristic evolution in which the eyewalls contract inward, the inner eyewall dissipates, and a new eyewall forms at a larger radius. There is no wellaccepted theory of this phenomenon. Finally, the issue of hurricane steering remains the focus of lively research. Most theories pertain to the drift of barotropic vortices on - planes (on which the vertical component of

the Earths rotation rate varies linearly with latitude). These theories predict that hurricanes should drift westward and poleward with respect to the mean wind. They do not account for the nonuniformity of the background potential-vorticity gradient in which hurricanes are embedded, nor do they recognize hurricanes as strongly baroclinic vortices with anticyclones in the upper troposphere. It seems likely that accounting for such effects will radically alter our understanding of hurricane motion.

CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION
Hurricanes evolve through a life cycle of stages from birth to death. A tropical disturbance in time can grow to a more intense stage by attaining a specified sustained wind speed. They are said to be Earth's strongest tropical cyclones. A distinctive feature seen on many hurricanes and are unique to them is the dark spot found in the middle of the hurricane. This is called the eye. Surrounding the eye is the region of most intense winds and rainfall called the eye wall. Large bands of clouds and precipitation spiral from the eye wall and are thusly called spiral rain bands. With hurricanes being as powerful as they are, it is not surprising that upon landfall they cause damage and destruction. Even when the hurricane has yet to make landfall, its effects can be dangerous. However, most of the damage caused to man and nature occur as a hurricane makes landfall. Hurricanes present a large number of fascinating and unresolved problems that have received surprisingly little attention from theorists. As such, they remain a fertile and important subject of research in fluid dynamics.