Our wavelet analysis of Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic Data (AVISO) sea surface height anomaly reveals an oscillation with a period of 30 days, which exists only inside the western boundary current region. The mechanism may be an instability of cross-equatorial current. The research tool is a simple equivalent shallow water model in the presence of background cross-equatorial current. By expanding the perturbation equation with Weber function and keeping the first four modes, the dispersion relation in the presence of cross-equatorial current is obtained. Our instability analysis demonstrates the existence of unstable modes in this boundary current region. The most unstable shortwave has a period of approximate 30 days, which is in accordance with the AVISO observations.
XU Zhao, CHAO Ji-ping, FENG Li-cheng
. An instability of cross-equatorial meridional flow[J]. Journal of Tropical Oceanography, 2012
, 31(6)
: 1
-5
.
DOI: 10.11978/j.issn.1009-5470.2012.06.001
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