Seasonal variability in the characteristics of the upper atmospheric global normal modes

The stability analyses of the stream function at the upper atmosphere have been conducted using a global barotropic spectral model with a view to examine the seasonal characteristics. The growing eigen modes are classified into three groups with periods in the range of 3–8, 11–18 and 20–50 days. This study indicates that the growth and movement of all the three types of modes are adequately sustained by the asymmetric basic flow. All the modes grow faster in summer than in winter. The meridional shear of the basic flow is the most important source of growth of the perturbations. In the absence of the meridional wind shear, the eigen modes grow slowly, in which case, the quasi-nonlinear triad interaction between the waves is identified to contribute significantly to the growth of the modes. The robustness of the eigen modes is also examined in this study using the barotropic model at different horizontal resolutions in the triangular truncation scheme.