Turbulent self-organized criticality

In the prototype sandpile model of self-organized criticality time series obtained by decomposing avalanches into waves, distinguished by the number of times the avalanche seed site has toppled, show intermittent fluctuations. The qth moments of wave size differences possess local multiscaling and global simple scaling regimes analogous to those holding for velocity structure functions in fluid turbulence. The correspondence involves identity of a basic scaling relation and of the form of relevant probability distributions. The sandpile provides a qualitative analog of many features of turbulent phenomena.