Turbulence of near-inertial waves in the continuously stratified fluid

By using the normal form of continuously stratified “primitive” equations of geophysical fluid dynamics with density (in the ocean), or potential temperature (in the atmosphere) playing the role of the vertical coordinate, we decouple vortex and wave motions in the system, introduce normal variables, and derive the effective Hamiltonian for waves with frequencies close to the inertial frequency (near-inertial waves, NIW). We then apply the weak turbulence approach to the random-phase ensembles of these waves. We show how the anisotropic scale-invariance of NIW may be exploited in order to obtain the stationary power-law spectra. The non-decay anisotropic scale-invariant dispersion laws of the NIW-type were not studied previously in the weak-turbulence literature.