Click here for a simulation of f-plane baroclinic turbulence growing from a linearly unstable meridional temperature gradient. The left panel is the full temperature field and the right panel is the eddy temperature field (i.e. the large-scale gradient has been removed). The basic state velocity jump between upper and lower layers is 2U and the deformation radius is \lambda. The bottom friction parameter for this simulation is \kappa\lambda/U = 0.32.
Click here for a simulation of the eddy temperature field in a baroclinically unstable meridional temperature gradient on a \beta-plane. The domain size is 2\pi*25 deformation radii per side. The left panel shows the zonally-averaged zonal barotropic velocity and indicates the rapid growth of the zonal modes after a time of approximately 25*\lambda/U. The non-dimensional parameters for this simulation are \beta\lambda/U = 0.5 and \kappa\lambda/U = 0.02.
This is a smaller (dimension-wise) version of the previous movie.
Click here for a movie of fully equilibrated baroclinic turbulence on a beta-plane. The left hand panel is the zonally-averaged zonal barotropic velocity, the center panel is the upper layer eddy potential vorticity field and the right panel is the lower layer eddy potential vorticity field. The basic state velocity jump between layers is again 2U and the non-dimensional parameters are \beta\lambda/U = 0.5 and \kappa\lambda/U = 0.02.
Click here for a movie of the upper and lower layer PVs for a weakly non-linear simulation using the full baroclinic code. For this simulation \epsilon has a value of 0.2. The full evolution of the system occurs over a time scale of \epsilon^{-4}, however, over a period \epsilon^{-2} you do see the development of westward jets as predicted by the amplitude equations (see upper right panel which plots the barotropic zonally-averaged zonal velocity).
Last Modified - Nov. 6, 2006