Berkeley Fluids Seminar
University of California, Berkeley
Bring your lunch and enjoy learning about fluids!
Monday, October 16, 2017
12:00-13:00, Fanuc Room (6120), Etcheverry Hall
Jacob Edman (UC Berkeley)
Beyond the rigid lid: baroclinic modes in a structured atmosphere
Abstract: The baroclinic-mode decomposition is a fixture of the tropical-dynamics literature due to its simplicity and apparent usefulness in understanding a wide range of atmospheric phenomena. However, its derivation relies on the assumption that the tropopause is a rigid lid, which artificially restricts the vertical propagation of wave energy. This causes tropospheric buoyancy anomalies of a single vertical mode to remain coherent for all time in the absence of dissipation. Here, we derive the Green’s functions for these baroclinic modes in a two-dimensional troposphere (or, equivalently, a three-dimensional troposphere with one translational symmetry) that is overlain by a stratosphere. These Green’s functions quantify the propagation and spreading of gravity waves generated by a horizontally localized heating, and they can be used to reconstruct the evolution of any tropospheric heating. For a first-baroclinic two-dimensional right-moving or left-moving gravity wave with a characteristic width of 100 km, its initial horizontal shape becomes unrecognizable after 4 hours, at which point its initial amplitude has also been reduced by a factor of 1/π. After this time, the gravity wave assumes a universal shape that widens linearly in time. For gravity waves on a periodic domain the length of Earth’s circumference, it takes only 10 days for the gravity waves to spread their buoyancy throughout the entire domain.
Bio: Jake Edman is a PhD candidate studying convection, clouds, and atmospheric dynamics with David Romps in the Earth and Planetary Science department at UC Berkeley. Previously, he obtained bachelor's degrees in physics and earth and environmental science at UC Irvine.
Acknowledgments
Prof. Graham Fleming (Vice Chancellor for Research, UC Berkeley)
Prof. Eliot Quataert on behalf of The Theoretical Astrophysics Center and the Astronomy Department (UC Berkeley)
Prof. Philip S. Marcus on behalf of the Mechanical Engineering Department (UC Berkeley)
Prof. Michael Manga (Earth and Planetary Science, UC Berkeley)
Prof. Evan Variano (Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley)