The topographic control of planetary-scale flow

Details The topographic control of planetary-scale flow The topographic control of planetary-scale flow

Feb 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993jfm...247..603w&link_type=abstract

Journal of Fluid Mechanics (ISSN 0022-1120), vol. 247, p. 603-621.

Statistics

Computation

5

Earth Rotation, Stratified Flow, Topography, Zonal Flow (Meteorology), Computational Fluid Dynamics, Planetary Waves, Vortices

Scientific paper

We develop a theory to describe the topographic control of planetary-scale flows resulting from the variation of the earth's rotation with latitude. We show that, on passing over topography, an inertial, zonal current on an equatorial beta-plane may pass through a control at which the flow changes from a subcritical to a supercritical solution branch. Downstream of this control, a transition back to the subcritical solution branch may occur, for example, by the generation of planetary eddies or radiating Rossby waves. We calculate the energy dissipated across such a transition and discuss the relevance of this theory for a number of atmospheric and oceanic phenomena. We also show that this phenomenon is analogous to the hydraulic control of a nonrotating, stratified flow passing through a channel of variable width.

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