Multiple states of two-dimensional turbulence above topography

The recent work of Siegelman & Young (PNAS, vol. 120(44), 2023, pp. e2308018120) revealed two extreme states reached by the evolution of unforced and weakly-damped two-dimensional turbulence above random rough topography, separated by a critical kinetic energy E_#. The low- and high-energy solutions correspond to topographically-locked and roaming vortices, surrounded by non-uniform and homogeneous background potential vorticity (PV), respectively. However, we found that these phenomena are restricted to the particular intermediate length scale where the energy was initially injected into the system. Through simulations initialised by injecting the energy at larger and smaller length scales, we found that the long-term state of topographic turbulence is also dependent on the initial length scale. If the initial length scale is comparable with the domain size, the flow field evolves to the minimum-enstrophy state proposed by Bretherton and Haidvogel (J. Fluid Mech., vol.78(1), 1976, pp. 129-154), without the presence of vortices, especially when the energy is no larger than E_#. As the initial length scale becomes smaller, more vortices nucleate, and become more mobile. Simultaneously, the background PV tends to homogenization, even if the energy is below E_#. These results complement the phenomenology of topographic turbulence documented by Siegelman & Young, by showing that the minimum-enstrophy and background PV homogenization states can be reached by large- and small-scale initial fields, respectively, whatever the energy is.