Traditionally, turbulence is considered dissipative and disorganized. The exact physical mechanism for the formation and maintenance of coherent structures, namely vortices or large eddy circulations in turbulent fluid flows is not yet identified. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that cumulus clouds bear a close resemblance to cauliflowers. Meteorological text books commonly describe the cumulus clouds to have cauliflowerlike structure. In the midst of turbulence in air flows, clouds retain their identity in shape and the most astonishing of all is the formation of ice crystals with exquisitely symmetrical structure.
Perfect order appears to underlie apparent chaos in turbulent flows.
Turbulence, namely, seemingly random fluctuations of all scales, therefore, plays a key role in the formation of selfsimilar coherent structures in the atmosphere. Such a concept is contrary to the traditional view that turbulence is dissipative, i.e. ordered growth of coherent form is not possible in turbulent flows. Ramified branching networks serve to connect and assist in the functioning as a unified whole of selfsimilar fractal objects. A fractal object can be resolved into smaller interconnected component parts which resemble the whole in shape.