Barotropic instability of weakly non-parallel zonal flows

Abstract

Integrations of the linear stability problem, in the present numerical investigation of weakly nonparallel zonal flows barotropic instability having localized intense shear regions, reveal the existence of unstable localized wave packets. The spatial structure and eigenfrequencies of these packets depend on two parameters measuring the degree of supercriticality and the zonal length scale of the shear region. It is found that instability structure is defined by conditions ensuring the decay of the wave packet at infinity, and the transition from long to short waves across a turning point region that is controlled by nonparallel effects.