Bottom-Trapped Rossby Waves in an Exponentially Stratified Ocean

Abstract

The well-known Rhines theory of bottom-trapped topographic Rossby waves (TRW) in a uniformly stratified ocean over a sloping seabed, and its dispersion relation between wave frequency and wavenumber components, have served a very useful purpose in prompting recognition of the existence of TRW in the ocean and in motivating the search for sources of such disturbances. However, in quantitative studies of backward ray tracing of bottom-trapped Rossby waves for source search purposes, a realistic profile of the buoyancy frequency N(z) within the water column ought to be taken into account. Toward this goal an analytic solution for linear, quasigeostrophic, topographic Rossby waves for an ocean having regionally distinct exponential profiles of buoyancy frequency is offered.