Spontaneously Growing Hurricanelike Disturbances in a Simple Baroclinic Model with Latent Heat Release

Tropical winds and their variations on time scales down to a week or two appear to have a baroclinic character in the sense that upper winds (say at 250 mb) are mostly in the opposite direction to lower-level winds (say at 750 mb). One can exploit this fact by exploring models where a fixed vertical structure with this character is assumed so that the mathematical problem reduces to one of finding variations in the horizontal and in time. This paper is about such models, the overiding aim being mathematical simplicity rather than realism so that for example, it should be easy for students to understand the basic processes involved. Despite this, the results can readily be compared with observations.