Convective and absolute instability of baroclinic eddies

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Abstract
The long time response to an arbitrary unstable disturbance in a two layer model on an f-plane is sought. It has been found that depending on the ratio of the shear to the average speed of the mean flow two types of baroclinic instabilities exist: convective and absolute. When the system supports convective instabilities the long time response to an initial pulse excitation decreases with time at a fixed point in space. When such a system is excited by a wave maker the steady state frequency of response of the system corresponds to a spatially amplifying wave oscillating with the frequency of the wave maker. If the dispersion relation yields a saddle point of the frequency in the wave number complex plane with positive imaginary part of the frequency the system supports absolute instabilities. The response of the system at any point in space excited by an arbitrary signal grows exponentially with time at a rate determined by the properties of the system at the saddle point. This response is different from that of unstable normal modes. It is conjectured that absolute instability may be responsible for local cyclogenesis activity in certain geographical regions.