On the Self-Maintenance of Midlatitude Jets

In this paper an atmospheric jet is considered self-maintaining if the overall effect of baroclinic eddies is to preserve or enhance its westerly shear with height. Observations suggest that the wintertime jets in Earth’s atmosphere are self-maintaining. This has implications for the intrinsic variability of these jets—the annular modes—and for how the extratropics respond to tropical warming. The theory of quasigeostrophic eddy–zonal flow interactions is employed to determine how a jet can be self-maintaining. Whether or not a jet is self-maintaining is found to depend sensitively on the meridional distribution of the absorption of wave activity. The eddy driving of the jet in a simple two-level model of the global circulation is examined. It is found that, with approximately wintertime settings of parameters (a radiative equilibrium equator–pole temperature contrast of 60 K), the midlatitude jets in this model are self-maintaining. The jet is not self-maintaining, however, when the radiative equilibrium equator-to-pole temperature contrast is reduced below a critical value (∼24 K temperature contrast). Eddy amplitudes are also greatly reduced, in this case. The transition to a self-maintaining jet, as the radiative equilibrium temperature contrast is increased, suggests a set of feedback mechanisms that involve the strength of the baroclinicity in the jet center and where baroclinic eddies are absorbed in the subtropics. A barotropic eastward force applied to the model Tropics causes a poleward shift in the latitudes of greatest eddy absorption and induces a transition from a non-self-maintaining to a self-maintaining jet. Self-maintaining behavior ultimately disappears, as the equator–pole thermal contrast, and thus the eddies, are strengthened. The flow is then highly disturbed and no longer dominated by wavelike baroclinic eddies.