Precipitation Banding in Idealized Baroclinic Waves

Physical Simulation of Baroclinic Waves and Vortices in the Atmosphere

Weather-Layer Dynamics of Baroclinic Eddies and Multiple Jets in an Idealized General Circulation Model

The general circulation and the behavior of multiple jets and baroclinic eddies are described for an atmosphere in which meridional potential temperature gradients and eddies are confined to a weather layer. The weather layer is separated from the frictional lower boundary by a statically stable barotropic layer with significant mass. Closure of the zonal momentum budget in the resulting circul...

Transport and mixing of chemical air masses in idealized baroclinic life cycles

[1] The transport, mixing, and three-dimensional evolution of chemically distinct air masses within growing baroclinic waves are studied in idealized, high-resolution, life cycle experiments using suitably initialized passive tracers, contrasting the two well-known life cycle paradigms, distinguished by predominantly anticyclonic (LC1) or cyclonic (LC2) flow at upper levels. Stratosphere-tropos...

Dissipative Energization of Baroclinic Waves by Surface Ekman Pumping

A two-layer quasi-geostrophic model is used to study the effect of lower boundary Ekman pumping on the energetics of baroclinic waves. Although the direct impact of the Ekman pumping is to damp the total eddy energy, either the eddy available potential energy (EAPE) or the eddy kinetic energy (EKE), individually, can grow due to the Ekman pumping. Growth of EAPE is favored if the phase differen...

Lyapunov, Floquet, and singular vectors for baroclinic waves

The dynamics of the growth of linear disturbances to a chaotic basic state is analyzed in an asymptotic model of weakly nonlinear, baroclinic wave-mean interaction. In this model, an ordinary differential equation for the wave amplitude is coupled to a partial differential equation for the zonal flow correction. The leading Lyapunov vector is nearly parallel to the leading Floquet vector φ1 of ...