Hydraulic control of zonal currents on a β-plane

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Eastward-flowing zonal currents on a thin rotating shell, such as a planetary atmosphere or ocean, have integral properties analogous to open channel flows, the latitudinal width of the zonal current being the analogue of the depth of an open channel flow. The purpose here is to apply the formalism and some of the concepts of open channel flow hydraulics to zonal flows and demonstrate the results with laboratory experiments. In particular a critical relationship is found between a representative zonal velocity, U, and the half-width of the current, a. A dimensionless parameter (U/βa2), the Froude/Rossby number, is found analogous to the Froude number of open channel flow. Westward-flowing currents do not have an equivalent analogue.

This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit: