MESOSCALE INSTABILITY OF A BAROCLINIC BASIC FLOW-PART Ⅱ:TRANSVERSAL INSTABILITY

This is the second part of "Mesoscale Instability of a Baroclinic Basic Flow" which discusses the instability of a basic flow against mesoscale perturbations of transversal type.A bi-mode instability spectrum is obtained by generalizing the Eady model to ageostrophic regime in an f-plane:Eady modes present at the synoptic and subsynoptic scales,while the ageostrophic baroclinic mesoscale modes present at the inertial scales of a few tens to hundreds kilometers.The mesoscale mode is featured by an asymmetric "eat eyes" pattern in the vertical cross section and by an alternative distribution of divergence and vorticity in the horizontal direction.The growth rates of the mesoscale modes are about four times larger than those of Eady modes in magnitudes for the same wind profile.The major energy source for development both Eady mode and mesoscale mode is the baroclinic available energy stored in the rotational basic flow.