Turbulent Flows Are Not Uniformly Multifractal

Understanding turbulence rests delicately on the conflict between Kolmogorov's 1941 theory of nonintermittent, space-filling energy dissipation characterized by a unique scaling exponent and the overwhelming evidence to the contrary of intermittency, multiscaling, and multifractality. Strangely, multifractality is not typically envisioned as a local flow property, variations in which might be clues exposing inroads into the fundamental unsolved issues of anomalous dissipation and finite time blowup. We present a simple construction of local multifractality and find that much of the dissipation field remains surprisingly monofractal à la Kolmogorov. Multifractality appears as small islands in this calm sea, its strength growing logarithmically with the local fluctuations in energy dissipation-a seemingly universal feature. These results suggest new ways to understand how singularities could arise and provide a fresh perspective on anomalous dissipation and intermittency. The simplicity and adaptability of our approach also holds great promise in applications ranging from climate sciences to medical data analysis.