Multilayer primitive equations model with velocity shear and stratification

Details Multilayer primitive equations model with velocity shear and stratification Multilayer primitive equations model with velocity shear and stratification

2003-12-12

arxiv.org/abs/physics/0312083v1

Physics

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics

Scientific paper

The purpose of this paper is to present a multilayer primitive equations model for ocean dynamics in which the velocity and buoyancy fields within each layer are not only allowed to vary arbitrarily with horizontal position and time, but also with depth--linearly at most. The model is a generalization of Ripa's inhomogeneous one-layer model to an arbitrary number of layers. Unlike models with homogeneous layers, the present model is able to represent thermodynamics processes. Unlike models with slab layers, i.e. those in which the layer velocity and buoyancy fields are depth-independent, the present model can represent explicitly the thermal-wind balance within each layer which dominates at low frequency. In the absence of external forcing and dissipation, energy, volume, mass, and buoyancy variance constrain the dynamics; conservation of total zonal momentum requires in addition the usual zonal symmetry of the topography and horizontal domain. The model further possesses a singular Hamiltonian structure. Unlike the single-layer counterpart, however, no steady solution has been possible to prove formally (or Arnold) stable using the above invariants. It is shown here that a model with only two layers provides an excellent representation of the exact gravest baroclinic mode phase speed. This suggests that configurations with only a small number of layers will be needed to tackle a large variety of problems with enough realism.

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