Premium
Baroclinic instability of a simple flow on the sphere
Author(s) -
Hollingsworth A.
Publication year - 1975
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.49710142908
Subject(s) - baroclinity , instability , simple (philosophy) , momentum (technical analysis) , plane (geometry) , physics , flow (mathematics) , mechanics , classical mechanics , zonal flow (plasma) , geology , geometry , meteorology , mathematics , economics , philosophy , plasma , epistemology , finance , quantum mechanics , tokamak
We examine the baroclinic instability problem in some simple two‐level models on a sphere. We find that there are large momentum transports associated with the growing waves. These transports are induced by aspects of the spherical geometry other than those included in the beta‐plane analysis. On the other hand, the beta‐plane gives a good description of the essential dynamics of the waves.