Quasi-geostrophic dynamics of an ellipsoidal vortex embedded in a nonuniform flow is studied in the approximation of the infinitely deep rotating ocean with a constant buoyancy frequency. The vortex core is an ellipsoid with a constant vorticity different from the background vorticity value. The core is shown to move along with the flow and to deform under the effect of it. Regimes of the core's behavior depend on the flow characteristics and the initial values of the vortex parameters (the shape and the orientation relative to the flow). These regimes are (i) rotation (along with the eccentricity oscillation), (ii) oscillation about one of the two specific directions (along with the eccentricity oscillation), and (iii) infinite horizontal elongation of the core. The localized regimes (rotation and oscillation) of the core motion are analyzed. It is shown, that zones of the water mass capturing can appear in the induced velocity field. The mechanisms of fluid particle trajectory chaotization are revealed; in particular, it is shown that, owing to the double periodicity of the core motion, all the nonlinear resonances appear as pairs of two resonance islands with the same winding number.

By employing an analytical model for a constant-vorticity distributed vortex, namely, the ellipsoidal vortex embedded in a constant buoyancy frequency shear flow, the problem of the passive scalar transport through the vortex's boundary is addressed. Since the model's governing equations do not allow such transition to occur, we implement a low-scale diffusion process into the vortex model. Taking into consideration the diffusion term, we study the passive scalar transport in a steady state (the boundary of the ellipsoidal vortex does not change in time) and in a perturbed state (the boundary of the ellipsoidal vortex changes in time periodically) within the time scope corresponding to the characteristic life cycle of a mesoscale oceanic eddy. An increase of the passive scalar transport through the boundary in the perturbed state in comparison with the steady state due to the irregular dynamics of the surrounding flow is shown. The applicability scopes of the investigation for studying oceanic eddies in nature are discussed.

We formulate a dynamically consistent two-layer quasigeostrophic model of geophysical flow using the concept of background currents which are characterized by a constant potential vorticity minimizing the energy. An incident current over a delta-like isolated topographic feature generates a topographically trapped vortex in the bottom layer with a singular elliptic point, and one with a regular elliptic point in the upper layer. Such vortices are finite regions of recirculation which occur in the vicinity of isolated topographic features. The corresponding Hamiltonian equations of motion for a fluid particle are known to produce chaotic advection under the presence of the periodic incident current. When a periodic incident current is superimposed, fluid is entrained and detrained from the neighbourhood of the vortex and chaotic particle motion occurs. At a small amplitude periodic incident current we have a near-integrable case of weak chaotization in narrow stochastic layer near separatrix. At a finite amplitude periodic incident current we have the case of strong chaos, which will be investigated here. For the bottom layer of the flow, there is always a regular region (regular vortex core) around the singular elliptical point even in the case of a finite amplitude periodic incident current. Particles in this regular region have regular trajectories and will remain there permanently, whereas particles with chaotic trajectories will be emanated from the vortex by the incident current. Using the Chirikov criterion of resonance overlap, we estimate the radius of this regular vortex core and a range of the optimal frequencies, i.e. those frequencies of the incident current which provide a maximal possible stochastization of fluid particle trajectories.

In the frame of a three-layer, quasi-geostrophic analytical model of an f-plane geophysical flow, the Lagrangian advection induced by the interaction of a monopole vortex with an isolated topographic feature is addressed. Two different cases when the monopole is located either within the upper or the middle layer are of our interest. In the bottom layer, there is a delta-function topographic feature, which generates a closed recirculation region in its vicinity due to the background flow. This recirculation region extends to the middle and upper layers, and it plays the role of a topographic vortex. The interaction between the monopole and the topographic vortex causes a complex, including chaotic, advection of fluid particles. We show that the model's parameters, namely the monopole and topographic vortices' strengths and initial positions, and the layers' depths and densities, are responsible for the diverse advection patterns. While the patterns are rather complicated, one can single out two major processes, which mostly govern the fluid particle advection. The first one is the variation in time of the system's phase space structure, so that within the closed region of the topographic vortex, there appear periodically unclosed particle pathways by which the particles leave the topographic vortex. The second one is chaotic advection that arises from the nonstationarity of the monopole–topography interaction.