Numerical modeling of diurnal oscillation of insolation in the idealized model of general atmospheric circulation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7242/1999-6691/2026.19.1.1Keywords:
rotating convection, localized heating, general atmospheric circulation, baroclinic wavesAbstract
The Earth's rotation around its axis causes the sunlit region to constantly shift in the opposite direction. The resulting diurnal oscillations of the surface temperature can influence the structure and dynamics of the general circulation and midlatitude baroclinic waves. This paper presents a numerical study of the influence of diurnal insolation oscillations on the formation and characteristics of large-scale flows using a numerical analogue of the laboratory model of atmospheric general circulation. Two main regimes were considered: with regular and irregular baroclinic waves. Diurnal insolation oscillations were modeled using a localized, moving heat source. It is shown that for both regimes of baroclinic waves, the transition from stationary, zonally uniform heating to non-stationary, zonally inhomogeneous heating does not lead to qualitative changes of the mean flow structure or the distribution of pulsations. This only leads to quantitative changes, the magnitude of which does not exceed 15%. The hypothesis that a moving heat source would lead to an increase in pulsation energy was not confirmed. Moreover, the energy of meridional velocity pulsations, which characterizes the energy of baroclinic waves, decreases in the case of a moving heat source. A relatively weak effect of the transition from a stationary, zonally uniform heating regime to a non-stationary, localized one is explained by the fact that disturbances caused by the movement of the heat source are both spatially and frequency-localized.
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