Baroclinic Instability in the Ocean

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Baroclinic Instability in the Ocean

Global maps of inverse Eady time scale (days−1) (upper panel) and the ratio Lbci/Ldef (lower panel) - source Tulloch et al., 2011.In a new JPO paper, Ross Tulloch, John Marshall, Chris Hill and Shafer Smith report on an observational, modeling and theoretical study of the scales, growth rates and spectral fluxes of baroclinic instability in the ocean, permitting a discussion of the relation between the instability scale, the first baroclinic deformation scale (R1) and the equilibrated eddy scale.