The association of frontal formation, development, and movement with
large scale baroclinity is well documented. This investigation
deals with the mean large-scale baroclinic zones near the Asian East
Coast for the last two weeks of February 1975. Two deep, large-scale
baroclinic zones are found to be situated along the axis of the zones
of high frontal frequencies depicted by previous investigations of
the region's frontal climatology. The "southern baroclinic zone"
lies along the path of the warm Kuroshio ocean current and beneath
the climatological location of the upper level jet stream.
A frontogenesis equation is developed to assess the role of
mean fields and perturbation fields upon maintaining the mean baroclinity.
Analyses contained within demonstrate the various effects
of those fields. It is shown that to the north and to the south of
the southern baroclinic zone the mean diabatic heating and mean
horizontal advection (of mean potential temperature) are the dominant
terms in the equation, but that they tend to cancel each other.
Within the southern baroclinic zone the frontogenetic effect of the
mean diabatic heating term is negligible as is the effect of the
perturbation vertical advection term. While the frontogenetic
effect of the mean horizontal advection term is smaller within the
zone than outside, it is important for the maintenance of the baroclinity
there. The effects of mean vertical advection and perturbation
horizontal advection were the other important terms within the
zone and oppose the effects of the mean horizontal advection term. / Graduation date: 1981
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/28979 |
| Date | 30 May 1980 |
| Creators | Marlia, J. Christopher |
| Contributors | Barber, David A. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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