Abstract
The effects of topography on baroclinic wave flows are studied experimentally in a thermally driven rotating annulus of fluid. Fourier analysis and complex principal component (CPC) analysis of the experimental data show that, due to topographic forcing, the flow is bimodal rather than a single mode. Under suitable imposed experimental parameters, near thermal Rossby numberR OT =0.1 and Taylor numberT a = 2.2 × 107, the large-scale topography produces low-frequency oscillation in the flow and rather long-lived flow pattern resembling blocking in the atmospheric cir-culation. The ‘blocking’ phenomenon is caused by the resonance of travelling waves and the quasi-stationary waves forced by topography. The large-scale topography transforms wavenumber-homogeneous flows into wavenumber-dispersed flows, and the dispersed flows possess lower wavenumbers.
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