Solitary rossby waves over variable relief and their stability. Part II: numerical experiments

The barotropic, quasi-geostrophic vorticity equation describing large scale, rotating flows over zonal relief supports nonlinear permanent form solutions, namely nonlinear topographic Rossby waves. Through an analytical theory, these solutions have been shown to be neutrally stable to infinitesimal perturbations.Numerical algorithms, which necessarily truncate the infinite number of degrees of freedom of any continuum model to a finite number, are capable of reproducing the numerical equivalent of these form-preserving solutions. Moreover, these numerical solutions are shown to preserve their shape throughout the numerical experiment not only in the limit of small amplitude, but also for high amplitude (Rossby number → O(1)).Through numerical simulation, the stability analysis is carried far beyond the analytical limit of infinitesimal perturbations. The solutions maintain their stability in agreement with the analytical theory, up to perturbations having intensities almost of the same order as the solutions themselves. For higher-amplitude perturbations, the solutions break up and typical turbulent behavior ensues. The passage from wave-like to turbulent behavior, upon surpassing a critical perturbation value, can be observed in the sudden loss of phase locking of the permanent solution Fourier modes.