Abstract
Abstract The moist stability of a midlatitude zonal flow with a conditionally unstable layer in the presence of an Ekman layer is investigated. The vertical velocity employed in a simplified Kuo's parameterization is sustained by baroclinic wave forcing, diabatic heating and Ekman pumping. A general dispersion relation and eigenfunction are derived analytically for a class of flows with various vertical heating profiles. The moist unstable mode may be regarded as a baroclinic wave modified by the bulk effect of the convective heating, for which the fundamental dependences of the baroclinic growth rate on the Burger number and vertical shear remain qualitatively valid. Waves longer than the Rossby radius of deformation are not appreciably affected, while the shorter waves are significantly destablized by the convective heating. The growth rates and wavelengths of the most unstable modes are nonlinear functions of the averaged specific humidity of the moist layer, and there is an optimum specific humidity t...
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