Equatorial waves

Equatorial waves

Meteorology: Tropical

Published in Yeqiao Wang, Atmosphere and Climate, 2020

Equatorial waves are large-scale waves trapped in the equatorial region, which include equatorial Rossby waves, Kelvin waves, westward and eastward propagating inertiogravity waves, and mixed Rossby- gravity waves. Away from the equator the amplitude of these waves decays rapidly. The seminal paper by Matsuno[28] laid the theoretical foundation for understanding the dynamics of equatorial waves. Using a shallow-water model on an equatorial betaplane, Matsuno[28] extracted different modes of waves, which were later confirmed by observational analysis. Gill[29] extended this work and interpreted the atmospheric response to steady heating in the tropics in terms of equatorial waves. Recent studies have shown that some types of equatorial waves are coupled with moist convection, which modifies the wave structure and tends to slow down the wave propagation.

A fixed-point approach for azimuthal equatorial ocean flows

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Journal Information

Published in Applicable Analysis, 2022

Calin Iulian Martin, Adrian Petruşel

This paper is concerned with a study of the ocean dynamics in the equatorial region of the Pacific ocean, situated within a band of about latitude from the Equator. Equatorial waves are believed to be the main triggers of the El Niño phenomenon – an event associated with the appearance around the Christmas season of an ocean anomaly manifesting itself as a warm equatorial water flow approaching the western coast of South America. This occurrence was named by early fishermen ‘El Niño’ (Spanish for ‘The Christ Child’) and is one of the main factors in global climate change, cf. the discussion in [1].

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Meteorology: Tropical

A fixed-point approach for azimuthal equatorial ocean flows