THE FOUNDATION AND MOVEMENT OF TROPICAL SEMI-GEOSTROPHIC ADAPTATION

The breakdown and foundation of geostrophic balance is one of the important movements inthe mid-and high-latitude atmosphere and oceans.In the tropical area,the value of Coriolis pa-rameter is so small that it is difficult to satisfy the bi-geostrophic equilibrium between the pressureand velocity fields.However,in the tropical area,the zonal velocity of some motions in the atmo-sphere and oceans is large,so the Coriolis force is not small,geostrophic balance can exist in zonaldirection,i.e.semi-geostrophic balance.Furthermore,in the dominant area of Hadley circulationin the atmosphere or the area near the ocean meridional boundary,the meridional velocity is large,so geostrophic balance can also exist in meridional direction.In this paper,the process of the dis-persion of inertial gravity wave and the foundation of semi-geostrophic balance are first discussed.Second,the adjustment process between the velocity and pressure fields after adaptation is alsoviewed,and the scale criterion of the semi-geostrophic adaptation is discussed,i.e.for the motionwith meridional scale greater than the equatorial Rossby radius of deformation,the velocity andpressure fields after adaptation change to fit the initial pressure field;on the contrary,the fieldschange to fit the initial zonal velocity field,and the strength of the fields after adaptation dependson the zonal scale.