Recently a new wave-vortex decomposition method was developed and tested on ship and flight track data in the ocean and atmosphere. The method is disarmingly simple to use (less than ten lines in matlab), but yields surprisingly powerful results, albeit under strong assumptions such as horizontal isotropy of the data.

First, it performs an exact Helmholtz decomposition of the horizontal kinetic energy spectrum into its divergent and rotational components; this is achieved using the raw data without any model or curve fitting. Second, it leverages the Helmholtz decomposition into an estimate for the total internal wave energy spectrum by utilizing results from linear wave theory.

If buoyancy observations are also available then this allows decomposing an observed total (i.e. kinetic plus potential) energy spectrum into an internal wave component and a component associated with balanced vortical flow. Such a decomposition of one-dimensional spectra has not been possible before.

The method will be briefly described and its use demonstrated on simple examples. On-going work on results for near-tropopause flight track data (the celebrated Gage-Nastrom problem) will be discussed, as well as theoretical developments aimed at allowing for anisotropic data.

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*email: obuhler@cims.nyu.edu
*Preference: Oral