Abstract
Numerous observational studies of the Northern Hemisphere circulation have discussed the regional characteristics of transient eddies (paegle and Paegle, 1975, 1976; Blackmon et al., 1976; Blackmon et al., 1977, 1979; Lau, 1979; Lau and Wallace, 1979; Wallace and Gutzler, 1981; Blackmon and White, 1982; Blackmon et al., 1983a and b) Atmospheric fluctuations are separated in these studies in short, intermediate and long scales. The studies of Blackmon, Lau, Wallace and collaborators have identified perturbations in the height field in the eastern oceans that have a highly barotropic structure with strong vertical coherence, while those in the interior of continents are characterized by a more baroclinic structure. They also found that transients with periods between 2.5 and 6 days have some of the characteristics associated with baroclinic eddies while fluctuations on longer time scales appear to be more barotropic. The latter have been interpreted by some of the above cited authors in terms of two-dimensional Rossby wave propagation. These and other works (from Rossby, 1939, on) have shown the relevance of barotropic processes to interpret some of the observed features of large scale circulations
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© 1986 Science Press and American Meteorological Society
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Paegle, J.N., Zhen, Z., Yan, H., Paegle, J. (1986). Sources of Flow Variability in Barotropic Primitive Equation Models. In: Xu, Y. (eds) Proceedings of International Symposium on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau and Mountain Meteorology. American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-935704-19-5_38
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-935704-19-5_38
Publisher Name: American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA
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