This presentation continues work begun in the paper ``Tropical Cyclogenesis Via Convectively Forced Vortex Rossby Waves in a Three-Dimensional Quasigeostrophic Model'', by M. T. Montgomery and J. Enagonio, forthcoming in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. For the presentation, we use a primitive equation model to investigate the spinup of a 5 m/s, 75 km RMW initial vortex (which might be produced by a midlevel convectively-generated vortex or closed-flow pattern in an easterly wave) to a tropical storm for comparison with our quasigeostrophic tropical cyclogenesis studies. We compare quantitative results from the two models on the tropical storm spinup time and magnitude, first considering the barotropic case and then extending the study to two layers. Assuming an initial state of nonlinear balance, we investigate whether the interpretation of our cyclogenesis results in terms of vortex Rossby wave, mean flow interactions is still valid in the primitive equation framework.
The results of this theoretical work are compared in detail to existing observations.