Abstract
THE remark which Dr. Richardson criticizes was not made without some consideration of the contributions and views of the many meteorologists to whom he refers; and I believe a number of them would not dispute its rough justice. I admit, however, that I did not, at a first reading, properly appreciate the significance of Dr. Richardson's empirical discovery1 twenty-five years ago of the four-thirds-power law of ‘diffusivity for neighbours’. Had its equivalence to a statement about the correlation between velocity differences and so about the spectrum of turbulence—which was, in fact, noted by Obukhoff2 and by von Weizsäcker3 in their original contributions to the similarity theory—been generally recognized at an earlier date, this discovery would doubtless have found the place in standard works on meteorology which it deserves.
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References
Richardson, L. F., Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 110, 709 (1926).
Obukhoff, A. M., Bull. Acad. Sci. U.S.S.R. (Geog. and Geophys.), Nos. 4–5, 453 (1941).
Von Weizsäcker, C. F., Z. Phys., 124, 614 (1948).
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MEGAW, E. Spectrum of Atmospheric Turbulence. Nature 167, 318 (1951). https://doi.org/10.1038/167318b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/167318b0
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