ATM OCN (Meteorology) 100
PLANETARY SCALE CIRCULATION
(continued)
PART II: THE JET STREAM & THE CIRCUMPOLAR VORTEX
Summer 2000
Lecture #18 scheduled for:
19 JUL 2001 (R)
Recommended Readings from Moran and Morgan (1997):
Pages 240-243; 234-240.
Objectives:
- To explain the cause of the thermal-wind relation and identify the characteristics.
- To explain why the midlatitude flow aloft is predominantly westerly, with upper tropospheric jet streams, located over the near surface polar front.
- To identify the thermal distribution and regions of an upper atmospheric wave.
- To describe the seasonal variation in the circumpolar vortex.
Today's Lecture Outline:
A. INTRODUCTION
- Definition and significance
- Discovery of the Jet Stream
B. ANATOMY OF THE JET STREAM
- Jet Stream Structure
- Types of Major Jet Streams
- Seasonal Variations in Jet Streams
- Reasons for Jet Streams
- The Thermal Wind Relationship
C. WAVES IN THE WESTERLIES
- The Circumpolar Vortex
- Observed Wave Features in The Circumpolar Vortex
- Long Planetary or Rossby Waves
- Seasonal Variations in the Circumpolar Vortex
Last revision 6 June 2001
Produced by Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D.
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI 53706
hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
URL: aos100/lectures/s0118jets.html