Scaling of saturation amplitudes in baroclinic instability

By using finite-amplitude conservation laws for pseudomomentum and pseudoenergy, rigorous upper bounds have been derived on the saturation amplitudes in baroclinic instability for layered and continuously-stratified quasi-geostrophic models. Bounds have been obtained for both the eddy energy and the eddy potential enstrophy. The bounds apply to conservative (inviscid, unforced) flow, as well as to forced-dissipative flow when the dissipation is proportional to the potential vorticity. This approach provides an efficient way of extracting an analytical estimate of the dynamical scalings of the saturation amplitudes in terms of crucial non-dimensional parameters. A possible use is in constructing eddy parameterization schemes for zonally-averaged climate models. The scaling dependences are summarized, and compared with those derived from weakly-nonlinear theory and from baroclinic-adjustment estimates