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On the forcing of planetary‐scale Rossby waves by Antarctica
Author(s) -
James I. N.
Publication year - 1988
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.49711448105
Subject(s) - barotropic fluid , rossby wave , northern hemisphere , forcing (mathematics) , southern hemisphere , middle latitudes , geology , climatology , latitude , atmospheric sciences , zonal flow (plasma) , baroclinity , potential vorticity , atmospheric circulation , rossby radius of deformation , jet stream , jet (fluid) , vorticity , physics , meteorology , mechanics , geodesy , vortex , plasma , quantum mechanics , tokamak
The propagation of Rossby waves forced at high latitudes into middle and low latitudes is studied using the barotropic vorticity equation on the sphere. Ray tracing theory indicates that fundamental differences exist between the response of an atmosphere initialized with typical northern hemisphere winter flow and typical southern hemisphere winter flow to such a forcing, with a substantial response more likely for the southern hemisphere case. Integrations with a fully nonlinear barotropic model confirm this suggestion and indicate that away from the local forcing region, linear theory provides a good description of the response. The most notable feature in the steady solutions is a split of the mid‐latitude jet close to New Zealand. The location of this split coincides well with a region where blocking is observed to be prevalent in the southern hemisphere.