Singularities in fully developed turbulence

• Finite-time singularity development in turbulence situations is phenomenologically explored.
• Spatial intermittency and compressibility effects are investigated.
• Quasi-geostrophic turbulence is shown to provide a bridge between two-dimensional and three-dimensional cases.

Phenomenological arguments are used to explore finite-time singularity (FTS) development in different physical fully-developed turbulence (FDT) situations. Effects of spatial intermittency and fluid compressibility in three-dimensional (3D) FDT and the role of the divorticity amplification mechanism in two-dimensional (2D) FDT and quasi-geostrophic FDT and the advection–diffusion mechanism in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence are considered to provide physical insights into the FTS development in variant cascade physics situations. The quasi-geostrophic FDT results connect with the 2D FDT results in the barotropic limit while they connect with 3D FDT results in the baroclinic limit and hence apparently provide a bridge between 2D and 3D.