Temperature Phase Tilt in Unstable Baroclinic Waves

Physical Simulation of Baroclinic Waves and Vortices in the Atmosphere

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 ...

Unstable Surface Waves in Running Water

We consider the stability of periodic gravity free-surface water waves traveling downstream at a constant speed over a shear flow of finite depth. In case the free surface is flat, a sharp criterion of linear instability is established for a general class of shear flows with inflection points and the maximal unstable wave number is found. Comparison to the rigid-wall setting testifies that free...

Nonlinear Generalization of Singular Vectors: Behavior in a Baroclinic Unstable Flow

Singular vector (SV) analysis has proved to be helpful in understanding the linear instability properties of various types of flows. SVs are the perturbations with the largest amplification rate over a given time interval when linearizing the equations of a model along a particular solution. However, the linear approximation necessary to derive SVs has strong limitations and does not take into ...