Understanding the Regeneration Stage Undergone by Surface Cyclones Crossing a Midlatitude Jet in a Two-Layer Model

Abstract

he present paper provides a rationale for the regeneration stage undergone by surface cyclones when they cross a baroclinic jet from its anticyclonic-shear (warm) side to its cyclonic-shear (cold) side in a two-layer quasigeostrophic model. To do so, the evolution of finite-amplitude synoptic cyclones in various baroclinic zonal flows is analyzed.Baroclinic zonal flows with uniform horizontal shears are first considered. While the anticyclonic shear allows a much more efficient and sustainable extraction of potential energy than the cyclonic shear, the growth of the lower-layer eddy kinetic energy (EKE) is shown to be highly dependent on the choice of the parameter values. An increased vertical shear leads to a more rapid EKE increase in the anticyclonic shear than in the cyclonic shear whereas increasing the vertically averaged potential vorticity gradient or the barotropic shear stabilizes the EKE more in the former shear than in the latter. Finally, vertical velocities arising from the nonlinear interaction between synoptic cyclones are shown to favor EKE growth in the cyclonic shear rather than in the anticyclonic one.The evolution of cyclones initialized on the warm side of a meridionally confined baroclinic jet is then investigated. The lower-layer cyclone crosses the jet axis and undergoes two distinct growth stages. The first growth stage results from the classical baroclinic interaction and is mainly driven by linear interaction between the cyclones and the jet. The second growth stage is mainly a nonlinear process. It is triggered by the vertical velocities created by the three-dimensional structure of the cyclonic disturbances when they reach the cyclonic side of the jet.