EWM 26: The case of the invisible waves: Emission by jets and fronts by Manita Chouksey

EWM 26: The case of the invisible waves: Emission by jets and fronts by Manita Chouksey (Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde) Rotating stratified flows, such as the ocean and atmosphere, appear as a two-timescale system featuring slow balanced and fast gravity wave dynamics. The balanced flow can nonlinearly generate unbalanced internal gravity waves via spontaneous loss of balance. How much of these ’apparent’ wave signals are really gravity waves? Here, we investigate the case of the ’invisible’ (or apparently visible) waves generated from jets and fronts, with nonlinear flow decomposition applied to an idealised atmospheric model of the baroclinic lifecycle of the jet stream. We dis cuss whether the wave-like structures in the upper troposphere are in fact part of the balanced flow, the so-called ’slaved modes’, or true gravity wave signals.