Rossby Waves and Zonal Flux Anomalies in the Analogs of Hadley and Ferrell Cells of the General Atmospheric Circulation: Model and Experiments

Numerical and laboratory experiments have been carried out to study the intrusion of anomalies into the axisymmetric distribution of the velocity field generated by sink sources and the MHD method in a rotating circular channel with a sloping bottom. A sectoral decrease in the intensity of the external force in a certain range of values has a decelerating effect on the velocity of propagation of anticyclones through the channel, while it has almost no influence on the dynamics of cyclones. At the same time, a significant part of moving anticyclones can disappear or almost stop, or new quasi-stationary anticyclones appear, despite there being no notable changes in the visible pattern of eddy propagation in the channel in the sector in which external intervention had been performed. However, changes are notable over the entire channel or in its individual parts in the mean characteristics of the eddy field. These anomalies can be interpreted as a decrease in the intensity of the subtropical Hadley cell, which is accompanied by a weakening of the trade winds in a sector of the equatorial atmospheric circulation and a decrease in the westerly transport at midlatitudes. The state of the mixture of standing and moving eddies is considered on the basis of a simple analytical model of the resonant interaction of transient (with an intermediate velocity maximum) modes in a shear flow. In this case, the amplitude of the stationary background state has the same dependence on the β effect as in the well-known Sverdrup relation for the stream function of the surface current in the ocean basin in the studies of the western boundary current intensification.