Horizontal Divergence Caused by Meanders of a Thin Jet

Abstract

To study horizontal divergence, the thin jet model is applied to meanders of a continuous potential vorticity front in a 11/2-layer (divergent barotropic) model. The distributions of the depth of the layer and the velocity component normal to the front are calculated on a coordinate system along the front. The distributions of the horizontal divergence are also investigated for some values of the Rossby number. In the model, divergence appears on the front from the cyclonic curve to the anticyclonic curve, and convergence appears on the front from the anticyclonic curve to the cyclonic curve. Further, a large Rossby number is found to cause an asymmetrical distribution of the horizontal divergence. The calculated values of the divergence are compared with the observational data.