Instability of equatorially trapped waves in stratified water (Q268222)

The author starts from the Euler equations governing the equatorially trapped waves and presents explicit equatorially trapped waves in stratified water. The density of these waves is a function only of the pressure, as such these waves are barotropic. The general geophysical equatorial barotropic incompressible flow is approached by using the short-wavelength instability method. This method is applied to the specific case of the equatorially trapped waves in stratified water. For a general geophysical equatorial barotropic incompressible flow, the author gives some estimates of the remainder terms by following a procedure which was previously used only in the non-geophysical case. Thus it can be concluded that, in the geophysical case too, the stability analysis is reduced to the stability analysis of the ordinary differential equation system along the trajectories of the basic flow. More, if for some trajectories the corresponding transport equation has at least one solution growing in time without bound, then such flow is unstable.