The onset of instability for zonal stratospheric flows

We investigate some qualitative aspects of the dynamics of the Euler equation on a rotating sphere that are relevant or stratospheric flows. Zonal flow dominates the dynamics of the stratosphere and for most known planetary stratospheres the observed flow pattern is a small perturbation of an n-jet, which corresponds to choosing the Legendre polynomial of degree n as the stream function. Since the 1-jet and the 2-jet are stable, the main interest is the onset of instability for the 3-jet. We confirm long standing conjectures based on numerical simulations by proving that the 3-jet is linearly unstable if and only if the rotation rate belongs to a critical interval. Turning to the nonlinear problem, we prove that linear instability implies nonlinear instability and that, as the rotation rate goes to infinity, nearby traveling waves change gradually from a cat’s eyes streamline pattern to a profile with no stagnation points.