Rossby Wave Propagation on a Realistic Longitudinally Varying Flow

The response of a barotropic model, linearized about a climatological 300-mb December–February time-mean flow to localized forcing, is considered. In order to aid the design of the experiments and interpretation of the results, a simplified analysis is made of the basic flow in terms of zonal wind, meridional vorticity gradient, and stationary wavenumber. From the analysis the possible existence of a strong waveguide in the Asian jet and weaker waveguides in the North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere jets is deduced. The possibility of propagation into the equatorial east Pacific and Atlantic oceans and even across these regions is also suggested. These features are confirmed by barotropic model integrations for a variety of perturbation vorticity source positions and shapes. These integrations also show preferred propagation regions arching across North America, from Europe to the Arabian Gulf and, in the Southern Hemisphere, into the equatorial Indian Ocean and Indonesian regions. They also show a tendency to produce a low-wavenumber, fast westward-moving “tail” along the Asian jet. Many of the features found in this study are remarkably consistent with observational teleconnection studies.