Balanced Convective Circulations in a Stratified Atmosphere. Part I: A Framework for Assessing Radiation, the Coriolis Force, and Drag

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Abstract The so-called traditional approximation, wherein the component of the Coriolis force proportional to the cosine of latitude is ignored, is frequently made in order to simplify the equations of atmospheric circulation. For velocity fields whose vertical component is comparable to their horizontal component (such as convective circulations), and in the tropics where the sine of latitude vanishes, the traditional approximation is not justified. We introduce a framework for studying the effect of diabatic heating on circulations in the presence of both traditional and nontraditional terms in the Coriolis force. The framework is intended to describe steady convective circulations on an f plane in the presence of radiation and momentum damping. We derive a single elliptic equation for the horizontal velocity potential, which is a generalization of the weak temperature gradient (WTG) approximation. The elliptic operator depends on latitude, radiative damping, and momentum damping coefficients. We show how all other dynamical fields can be diagnosed from this velocity potential; the horizontal velocity induced by the Coriolis force has a particularly simple expression in terms of the velocity potential. Limiting examples occur at the equator, where only the nontraditional terms are present, at the poles, where only the traditional terms appear, and in the absence of radiative damping where the WTG approximation is recovered. We discuss how the framework will be used to construct dynamical, nonlinear convective models, in order to diagnose their consequent upscale momentum and temperature fluxes.