Self-similarity of strongly stratified inviscid flows

It is well-known that strongly stratified flows are organized into a layered pancake structure in which motions are mostly horizontal but highly variable in the vertical direction. However, what determines the vertical scale of the motion remains an open question. In this paper, we propose a scaling law for this vertical scale Lv when no vertical lengthscales are imposed by initial or boundary conditions and when the fluid is strongly stratified, i.e., when the horizontal Froude number is small: Fh=U/NLh≪1, where U is the magnitude of the horizontal velocity, N the Brunt–Vaisala frequency and Lh the horizontal lengthscale. Specifically, we show that the vertical scale of the motion is Lv=U/N by demonstrating that the inviscid governing equations in the limit Fh→0, without any a priori assumption on the magnitude of Lv, are self-similar with respect to the variable zN/U, where z is the vertical coordinate. This self-similarity fully accounts for the layer characteristics observed in recent studies reportin...