The dynamics of an equivalent-barotropic model of the wind-driven circulation

摘要

Various steady and time-dependent regimes of a quasi-geostrophic 1.5 layer model of an oceanic circulation driven by a steady wind stress are studied. After being discretized as a numerical model, the quasi-geostrophic equations of motion become a dynamical system with a large dimensional phase space. We find that, for a wide range of parameters, the large-time asymptotic regimes of the model correspond to low-dimensional attractors in this phase space.