Critical Fluctuation of Wind Reversals in Convective Turbulence

Rudolph C. Hwa, C. B. Yang, S. Bershadskii, J. J. Niemela, K. R. Sreenivasan

Published 2004-04-08Version 1

The irregular reversals of wind direction in convective turbulence are found to have fluctuating intervals that can be related to critical behavior. It is shown that the net magnetization of a 2D Ising lattice of finite size fluctuates in the same way. Detrended fluctuation analysis of the wind reversal time series results in a scaling behavior that agrees with that of the Ising problem. The properties found suggest that the wind reversal phenomenon exhibits signs of self-organized criticality.