ON THE THEORY OF ANNUAL PRESSURE VARIATIONS

Abstract

A quantitative theory is derived showing the relation between temperature and surface pressure oscillations. By extension of methods used by Jeffreys and Bartels, a solution is obtained for the linearized hydro-dynamic equations in terms of spherical surface harmonic functions. The solution gives the surface pressure variation as a function of an integral containing the temperature variation throughout the atmosphere. The theory is applied to the problem of evaluating the amplitude of the annual surface pressure oscillation over the whole sphere. The temperature integral is computed from mean data for January and July and subjected to spherical harmonic analysis. The mean semi-annual surface pressure change is then evaluated from the coefficients of the harmonic series for the temperature integral and compared with observations.