Properties and Stability of a Meso-Scale Line-Form Disturbance

Abstract: By using the 3D dynamic equations for small- and meso-scale disturbances, an investigation is performed on the heterotropic instability (including symmetric instability and traversal-type instability) of a zonal line-like disturbance moving at any angle with respect to basic flow, arriving at the following results: (1) with linear shear available, the heterotropic instability of the disturbance will occur only when flow shearing happens in the direction of the line-like disturbance movement or in the direction perpendicular to the disturbance movement, with the heterotropic instability showing the instability of the internal inertial gravity wave; (2) in the presence of second-order non-linear shear, the disturbance of the heterotropic instability includes internal inertial gravity and vortex Rossby waves. For the zonal line-form disturbance under study, the vortex Rossby wave has its source in the second-order shear of meridional basic wind speed in the flow and propagates unidirectionally with respect to the meridional basic flow. As a mesoscale heterotropic instable disturbance, the vortex Rossby wave has its origin from the second shear of the flow in the direction perpendicular to the line-form disturbance and is independent of the condition in the direction parallel to the flow; (3) for general zonal line-like disturbances, if the second-order shear happens in the meridional wind speed, i.e., the second shear of the flow in the direction perpendicular to the line-form disturbance, then the heterotropic instability of the disturbance is likely to be the instability of a mixed Rossby–internal inertial gravity wave; (4) the symmetric instability is actually the instability of the internal inertial gravity wave. The second-order shear in the flow represents an instable factor for a symmetric-type disturbance; (5) the instability of a traversal-type disturbance is the instability of the internal inertial gravity wave when the basic flow is constant or only linearly sheared. With a second or nonlinear vertical shear of the basic flow taken into account, the instability of a traversal-type disturbance may be the instability of a mixed vortex Rossby – gravity wave.

Keywords:
• line-form disturbance,
• symmetric instability,
• traversal-type instability,
• heterotropic instability,
• vortex Rossby wave,
• wave property