Geophysical turbulent flows (atmosphere and climate dynamics, the Earth core dynamics) often undergo very rapid transitions. Those abrupt transitions change drastically the nature of the flow and are of paramount importance, for instance in climate. By contrast with most theoretical models of phase transitions, for turbulent flows it is difficult to characterize clearly the attractors (they are not simple fixed points of a deterministic dynamics or statistical equilibrium states) and the trajectories that lead to transitions from one attractor to the others.
I will review recent researches in this subject, including experimental and numerical studies of turbulent flows. Most of the talk will focus on theoretical works in the framework of the 2D stochastic quasi-geostrophic Navier-Stokes equations, the quasi-geostrophic equations, and the stochastic Vlasov equations. We will discuss predictions of phase transitions, validity of large deviation results of the Freidlin-Wentzell type, or more involved approaches when the Freidlin-Wentzell approach is not valid.
The results involve several works that have been done in collaborations with J. Laurie, M. Mathur, C. Nardini, E. Simonnet, J. Sommeria, T. Tangarife, H. Touchette, and O. Zaboronski.
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