Laboratory Simulation of Rossby Vortices and Solitons in Planetary Atmospheres and Oceans

Abstract

The experiments described in this chapter and in Chaps. 9–11 have been performed in the following succession. First, Rossby vortices and solitons were studied in a liquid rotating as a single body. In these experiments, the vortex under investigation was generated with a local pulsed (single-action) source and then propagated along the parallel in the free-travel regime through the rotating parabolic layer of shallow water. The lifetime of the vortex was limited by viscosity, apart from any other factors [7.1–3]. Next, experiments were carried out on generating Rossby vortices with stationary, axially symmetrical geostrophic counterflows. These experiments produced steadily drifting chains of vortices, from ten vortices in a chain when the flow velocity was low to one when it was high. This second series of experiments is of particular interest since it fits much better with the actual process of Rossby vortex generation by zonal flows in planetary atmospheres, therefore this series will be the first to be described. On the other hand, to elucidate the physical nature of the vortices in question one has to investigate them in their free-travel regime. Without such a study, it is impossible to tell whether there are any Rossby solitons among the observed vortices and whether they simulate plasma drift vortices and solitons. This series of experiments is described in Chaps. 9–11.