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Structure and dynamics of concentrated mesoscale vortices in planetary atmospheresa Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Bolshaya Gruzinskaya ul. 10, Moscow, 123995, Russian Federation b Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Profsoyuznaya str. 84/32, Moscow, 117997, Russian Federation c University of Texas in Austin, University Station 1, Austin, TX, 78712, USA d The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom Concentrated vortices are spatially localized structures with non-zero vorticity surrounded by a potential flow. These structures include a broad class of mesoscale vortices, such as dust devils, water vortices, and fire vortices, as well as larger-scale and more intense tornados. From a rather broad class of concentrated mesoscale vortices, dust devils are selected as the simplest and most easily observable structures owing to dust particles that play the role of tracers. This review aims at presenting the main results of studies of dust devils in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars. In the framework of ideal fluid dynamics, a recently proposed model is discussed which allows one to describe vortex structures that are fully localized in space. The results of numerical modeling of vortex dynamics and an analytic model of vortex generation in a convectively unstable atmosphere are briefly discussed.
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