PIMS/CSC Seminar: Dave Muraki (SFU)

There is a marked difference in the weather patterns and climate between the Earth's equatorial and midlatitude regions.  Much of this difference is due to the active role of moisture and convection in the tropics.  However, the even the dry fluid dynamiics of both regions are sufficiently different that their wave theories are typically found in disjoint chapters in the textbooks on atmospheric science.  In this talk, two aspects of planetary waves are given a unified presentation for the entire sphere.  The first is an extension of the midlatitude concept of potential vorticity which now gives a description for waves crossing the equator.  The second is an embedding of equatorial wave theory into a global context that includes the tradewinds which are known to block midlatitude waves from the tropics.

This work is in collaboration with Kevin Mitchell, Andrea Blazenko and Chris Snyder (NCAR).