An inviscid regularization for the surface quasi-geostrophic equation

Inspired by recent developments in Berdina-like models for turbulence, we propose an inviscid regularization for the surface quasi-geostrophic (SQG) equations. We are particularly interested in the celebrated question of blowup in finite time of the solution gradient of the SQG equations. The new regularization yields a necessary and sufficient condition, satisfied by the regularized solution, when a regularization parameter α tends to 0 for the solution of the original SQG equations to develop a singularity in finite time. As opposed to the commonly used viscous regularization, the inviscid equations derived here conserve a modified energy. Therefore, the new regularization provides an attractive numerical procedure for finite-time blowup testing. In particular, we prove that, if the initial condition is smooth, then the regularized solution remains as smooth as the initial data for all times. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.