The Effect of Quadric Shear Zonal Flows and Beta on the Downstream Development of Unstable Baroclinic Waves

Abstract. In this paper, the influence of quadric shear basic Zonal flows and β on the downstream development of unstable chaotic baroclinic waves is studied from the two-layer model in wide channel controlled by quasi geostrophic potential vorticity equation. Through the obtained Lorentz equation, we focused on the influence of the quadric shear zonal flow (the second derivative of the basic zonal flow is constant) on the downstream development of baroclinic waves. In the absence of zonal shear flow, chaotic behavior along feature points would occur, and the amplitude would change rapidly from one feature to another, that is, it would change very quickly in space. When zonal shear flow is introduced, it will smooth the solution of the equation and reduce the instability, and with the increase of zonal shear flow, the instability in space will increase gradually. So the quadric shear zonal flow has great influence on the stability in space.