Abstract. The damping of water surface standing waves (seiche modes) and the associated excitation baroclinic internal are studied experimentally in a quasi-two-layer laboratory setting with topographic obstacle at bottom representing seabed sill. We find that topography-induced wave drag contributes markedly to seiche such systems. Two major pathways barotropic–baroclinic energy conversions we...

A procedure for deriving a three-variable, one-level baroclinic model by truncating the familiar two-level quasigeostrophic model is described. The longitude, latitude and isobaric height of the low centre are introduced into the new model as alternative dependent variables. State space then becomes equivalent to geographical space, and the attractor becomes a structure within the atmosphere.

2. Warm core systems are equivalently barotropic because the thickness and mass fields align as vertically-stacked structures. The resulting lack of thickness advection by the geostrophic wind prevents any conversion of zonal available potential energy (PM) to eddy available potential energy (PE) by the geostrophic wind thus precluding any quasigeostrophic baroclinic instability for warm core s...