A note on large-scale motions in the tropics, a summary

Abstract

Large scale motions in extra tropical regions can be characterized as slow, quasi-geostrophic, and highly stable gravitationally, i.e., their Froude and Rossby numbers are small and their Richardson number is large. In the tropics the motions may no longer be quasi-geostrophic, but they remain slow and, if there is no condensation, highly stable gravitationally. These properties severely restrict the character of the tropical motions, even more so than those of the corresponding extra tropical motions.