1.9 General circulation diagnosis based on the pressure-isentrope hybrid vertical coordinates

Monday, 15 January 2001: 11:45 AM
Toshiki Iwasaki, Geophysical Institute, Tohoku University, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Japan

A new set of zonal mean equations based on the pressure-isentrope hybrid vertical coordinates, which diagnoses the mean-meridional circulation and wave, mean-flow interaction. It generalizes nonacceleration theorem toward finite-amplitude and/or nongeostrophic (fully primitive) expression. The formulation leads us to a consistent view of the meridional transports of mass, angular momentum, heat and minor constituents. The diagnostic study shows that there appear strong direct circulations associated with baroclinic waves in the mid-latitudetroposphere and weak poleward flows corresponding to the Brewer-Dobson circulation in the stratosphere. Next, we derive rate equations of potential energy and kinetic energies. Significant differences from conventional Eulerian mean view (Lorenz, 1955) are not that the zonal mean available potential energy directly transforms with the eddy available potential energy but that the zonal mean kinetic energy directly transforms with the eddy available potential energy . The latter is contributed to by the vertical divergence of the form drag over isentropic surfaces, which is the major term of the Eliassen-Palm flux divergence. We have a new look at the energetics of ideal baroclinic waves based on the above formulation.
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