Solitary Rossby waves in zonal shear flows and their interactions. [in Jupiter atmosphere]

Abstract A coupled pair of nonlinear evolution (Korteweg-deVries) equations are derived describing the interaction of solitary waves propagating in a zonal shear flow and having different long-wave phase velocities. Solutions of the eigenvalue problem and streamline patterns for solitary waves in several atmospheric flow models together with results on the interaction of these waves in one of these models are presented. Streamline patterns of a breather soliton solution of the modified Korteweg-deVries equation are included.