TY - JOUR
T1 - A simulation of atmospheric storm tracks with a forced barotropic model
AU - Lee, Sukyoung
AU - Anderson, Jeffrey L.
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1996/8/1
Y1 - 1996/8/1
N2 - A forced, nonlinear barotropic model on the sphere is shown to simulate some of the structure of the observed Northern Hemisphere midlatitude storm tracks with reasonable accuracy. For the parameter range chosen, the model has no unstable modes with significant amplitude in the storm track regions; however, several decaying modes with structures similar to the storm track are discovered. The model's midlatitude storm tracks also coincide with the location of a waveguide that is obtained by assuming that the horizontal variation of the time-mean flow is small compared with the scale of the transient eddies. Since the model is able to mimic the behavior of the observed storm tracks without any baroclinic dynamics, it is argued that the barotropic waveguide effects of the time-mean background flow acting on individual eddies are partially responsible for the observed storm track structure.
AB - A forced, nonlinear barotropic model on the sphere is shown to simulate some of the structure of the observed Northern Hemisphere midlatitude storm tracks with reasonable accuracy. For the parameter range chosen, the model has no unstable modes with significant amplitude in the storm track regions; however, several decaying modes with structures similar to the storm track are discovered. The model's midlatitude storm tracks also coincide with the location of a waveguide that is obtained by assuming that the horizontal variation of the time-mean flow is small compared with the scale of the transient eddies. Since the model is able to mimic the behavior of the observed storm tracks without any baroclinic dynamics, it is argued that the barotropic waveguide effects of the time-mean background flow acting on individual eddies are partially responsible for the observed storm track structure.
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U2 - 10.1175/1520-0469(1996)053<2113:ASOAST>2.0.CO;2
DO - 10.1175/1520-0469(1996)053<2113:ASOAST>2.0.CO;2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0030405391
SN - 0022-4928
VL - 53
SP - 2113
EP - 2128
JO - Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
JF - Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
IS - 15
ER -