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Dynamics of Coastally Trapped Mesoscale Ridges in the Lower Atmosphere.

American Meteorological Society

The dynamics of coastally trapped ridges that propagate in the marine layers of western North America and southeastern Australia is examined. A nonlinear semigeostrophic theory shows that the coastal ridges develop initially as an alongshore intrusion of denser marine air that is driven by the synoptic-scale pressure gradient. Nonlinear Kelvin waves evolve with the intruding flow on a slower time scale governed by the dynamic parameters. If dispersive effects balance the nonlinearities, then these waves evolve into solitary form. Otherwise, the nonlinear waves steepen so that the leading edge of the ridge eventually propagates as a shock.The theory is applied to two ridging events in California and one in southeastern Australia. In each case, good agreement is found between theory and observations of the evolution times and propagation speeds of the coastal ridges. The theory also explains the observed behavior of the events at prominent convex bends and gaps in the coastal topography. Copyright 1992 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.

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2011-04-20

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/33870

Reason, C. J. C., Steyn, Douw G. 1992. Dynamics of Coastally Trapped Mesoscale Ridges in the Lower Atmosphere. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 49(18) 1677-169.

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/