Nonlinear baroclinic equilibration at finite supercriticality

Abstract

The nonlinear equilibration of finite amplitude baroclinic waves in Phillips two-layer model is investigated at finite supercriticality. The aims are to quantify the robustness and relevance of the nonlinear theory of Warn, Gauthier and Pedlosky (WGP) for the evolution of the developing baroclinic wave, and to assess the tightness of pseudomomentum and improved pseudoenergy bounds for disturbance amplitude and energy. A high-resolution numerical model is used to perform a parameter sweep in (β, W)-space, where β is the inverse criticality of the initial flow, and W is the ratio of the channel width to the (internal) Rossby radius. At low supercriticalities, the main predictions of WGP are found to be accurate at short times, but at long times the fully nonlinear results are found to diverge from WGP's solution. The mechanism for equilibration involves the elimination of the lower layer potential vorticity (PV) gradient, but as the supercriticality increases this is achieved by the roll-up of a train of opposite-signed vortices, rather than by coarse-grain PV homogenization as in WGP. Peak wave amplitudes are typically ≈90% of the maximum attainable under the pseudomomentum bound. New formulae are given for the pseudoenergy bound on disturbance energy which, unlike the WGP solution and the pseudomomentum bound, have non-trivial dependence on W. A detailed assessment is made of the extent to which these bounds are attained.