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Baroclinic instability of an idealized model of the polar night jet
Author(s) -
McIntyre M. E.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.49709841513
Subject(s) - baroclinity , stratosphere , jet (fluid) , troposphere , atmospheric sciences , amplitude , instability , polar , physics , polar night , dissipation , wavenumber , geology , richardson number , meteorology , climatology , mechanics , astronomy , turbulence , optics , thermodynamics , quantum mechanics
The zonal current u ( z ), considered by Murray (1960, Section 4), as a model for the polar night jet in the lower stratosphere, has no shear in the model troposphere, and constant vertical shear u z in the stratosphere, u being a continuous function of z . The Richardson number is large. It is shown that this zonal current is always unstable, in the absence of dissipation, to small‐amplitude wave disturbances of essentially the same kind as those found in the theories of Charney and Eady. But, for numerical parameter values appropriate to the base of the polar night jet, predicted growth rates are small, and the disturbances have high zonal wave number (say 5 to 10) and are not very deep (several km at most).