DISCONTINUOUS OSCILLATION IN THE ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION AND INDEX CYCLE

By using a low-order,two-layer baroclinic quasi-geostrophic model,a nonlinear system including the interaction between a thermal forced wave,a transient wave and zonal flow is studied. Under the conditions of near-resonance and weak baroclinic instability,the features of solution in phase space are discussed with the analytical methods of multiple scale and discontinuous oscillation.The results show that the dynamic coupling between forced wave and transient wave is responsible for the physical mechanism of the non-uniform index cycle of the atmospheric circulation.