In what sense is the hurricane eye a "containment vessel"?

The exchange of air between the eye, eyewall and sorrounding environment of mature tropical cyclones is used to investigate the tropical cyclone intensity problem. A 2D nondivergent barotropic model is used for the computation of tracer particles, which show mixing of air between the model eye, eyewall and outside the vortex. Several thousand three-dimensional trajectories were computed for the purpose. The results show that the high vorticity core of the hurricane remains largely impervious to the entrainment of air parcels from outside the wall region, despite the presence of environmental shear on the system.