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Barotropic interaction between planetary- and synoptic-scale waves during the life cycles of blockings

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Abstract

In this paper, in an equivalent barotropic framework a new forced nonlinear Schroedinger equation is proposed to examine the interaction between the planetary-scale waves and the localized synoptic-scale eddies upstream. With the help of the perturbed inverse scattering transform method, nonlinear parameter equations can be derived to describe the evolution of the dipole soliton amplitude, frequency, group velocity and phase under the forcing of localized synoptic-scale eddies. The numerical solutions of these equations predict that in the interaction between the weak dipole soliton (weak incipient dipole anomaly) and the synoptic-scale eddies, only when the high-frequency eddies themselves have a moderate parameter match they can near resonantly enhance a quasi-stationary large-amplitude split flow. The instantaneous total streamfunction field (the sum of background westerly wind, envelope Rossby soliton and synoptic-scale waves) is found to be very similar to the observed Berggren-type blocking on the weather map(Berggren et al. 1949). The role of synoptic-scale eddies is to increase the amplitude of large-scale dipole anomaly flow, and to decrease its group velocity, phase velocity and zonal wavenumber so that the dipole anomaly system can be amplified and transferred from dispersive system to very weak dispersive one. This may explain why and how the synoptic-scale eddies can reinforce and maintain vortex pair block. Furthermore, it is clearly found that during the prevalence of the vortex pair block the synoptic-scale eddies are split into two branches around the vortex pair block due to the feedback of amplified dipole block.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Ocean University of Qingdao, Key Laboratory of Marine Science and Numerical Modeling, State Oceanic Administration, 266003, Qingdao

    Luo Dehai

  2. LASG, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100029, Beijing

    Li Jianping

Authors
  1. Luo Dehai
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  2. Li Jianping
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Additional information

This research was supported jointly by the Foundation for University Key Teacher by the Ministry of Education and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (49775266, 49905007)), the Knowledge Innovation Key Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences in the Resource Environment Field (Grant No. KZCX 2-203) and the National Key Foundation Research Project (G1998040900, Part I).

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Dehai, L., Jianping, L. Barotropic interaction between planetary- and synoptic-scale waves during the life cycles of blockings. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 17, 649–670 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-000-0026-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-000-0026-5

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