Spontaneous Formation of Zonal Currents in Two-Dimensional Navier-Stokes Flow on a Rotating Hemisphere

Abstract

Spontaneous formation of an eastward circumpolar jet is found in the course of time development in two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes fluid on a rotating hemisphere with non-slip boundary at the equator, robustly from randomly chosen initial velocity fields. The formation of the eastward jet is in contrast with the robust formation of the westward jets in the full-sphere case.