On Limit Cycles and Vacillating Baroclinic Waves

Abstract

This paper contains a study of the energy conversions in Pedlosky's solution for finite-amplitude baroclinic wave development for the case of small dissipation. It is shown that the solution contains an implicit, non-physical source of mean kinetic energy owing to the neglect of a certain boundary condition on the developing mean flow. Additional features of the energetics are described which do not depend explicitly on the solution with the relevant boundary condition inserted. However, the possibility of limit-cycle solutions when this boundary condition is satisfied remains an open question.