Search Results (2)

Just before making landfall in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria (2017) underwent a concentric eyewall cycle in which the outer convective ring appeared robust while the inner ring first distorted into an ellipse and then disintegrated. The present work offers further support for the simple interpretation of this event in terms of the non-divergent barotropic model, which serves as the basis for a linear stability analysis and for non-linear numerical simulations. For the linear stability analysis the model’s axisymmetric basic state vorticity distribution is piece-wise uniform in five regions: the eye, the inner eyewall, the moat, the outer eyewall, and the far field. The stability of such structures is investigated by solving a simple eigenvalue/eigenvector problem and, in the case of instability, the non-linear evolution into a more stable structure is simulated using the non-linear barotropic model. Three types of instability and vorticity rearrangement are identified: (1) instability across the outer ring of enhanced vorticity; (2) instability across the low vorticity moat; and (3) instability across the inner ring of enhanced vorticity. The first and third types of instability occur when the rings of enhanced vorticity are sufficiently narrow, with non-linear mixing resulting in broader and weaker vorticity rings. The second type of instability, most relevant to Hurricane Maria, occurs when the radial extent of the moat is sufficiently narrow that unstable interactions occur between the outer edge of the primary eyewall and the inner edge of the secondary eyewall. The non-linear dynamics of this type of instability distort the inner eyewall into an ellipse that splits and later recombines, resulting in a vorticity tripole. This type of instability may occur near the end of a concentric eyewall cycle. Full article

A non-divergent barotropic model on a sphere transformed to Mercator coordinates is used to examine the variations in wave energy and amplitude along the energy dispersion paths of barotropic Rossby waves in non-uniform basic flows. Wave energy can be easily solved by specifying the divergence of the group velocity along the corresponding rays. In an analytical non-uniform basic flow that represents the basic features of the observed one at middle latitudes, waves with different periods decay accompanying the decreases in wave energy and amplitude and the increase in the total wavenumber. This implies that the waves are trapped and the energy is eventually absorbed by the basic flow. For the observed non-uniform basic flow that can represent the basic features of the non-divergent wind field at 200 hPa, the situation is more complicated. The significant increase in wave energy can be caused by either the convergence of wave energy or the barotropic energy absorption from the basic flow or both of them. A significant increase in amplitude can also be observed if the total wavenumber varies moderately. This means waves can significantly develop. Waves may decay if both wave energy and amplitude decrease. Waves may propagate without significant developing or decaying to realize a long distance propagation. The propagating waves are mainly caused by oscillating wave energy as well as amplitude. Full article