Barotropic Stability Theory

Explaining the growth of disturbances superimposed on mean flows is a central problem in meteorology. Most widely studied models of the development process involve perturbations to shear flows with shear restricted to the meridional direction. Recently...

the origin and growth to moderate amplitude of disturbances in shear slow had been traditionally ascribed to the linear modal instability of the flow. Recent work on initial value problems has suggested that nonmodal growth of perturbations may be of...

Properly configured disturbances are known to be effective in transferring the kinetic energy of a mean shear slow to neutrally stable modal and nonmodal waves Consideration of perturbation energetics requires that such oriented against the mean shear...