• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.936-946
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• 2007

Analytical geopotential field in balance with the sectoral mode (the first symmetric mode with respect to the equator) of the Rossby-Haurwitz wave on the inclined rotation axis was derived in presence of superrotation background flow. The balanced field was obtained by inverting the divergence equation with the time derivative being zero. The inversion consists of two steps, i.e., the evaluation of nonlinear forcing terms and the finding of analytical solutions based on the Poisson's equation. In the second step, the forcing terms in the from of Legendre function were readily inverted due to the fact that Legendre function is the eigenfunction of the spherical Laplacian operator, while other terms were solved either by introducing a trial function or by integrating the Legendre equation. The balanced field was found to be expressed with six zonal wavenumber components, and shown to be of asymmetric structure about the equator. In association with asymmetricity, the advantageous point of the balanced field as a validation method for the numerical model was addressed. In special cases where the strength of the background flow is a half of or exactly the same as the rotation rate of the Earth it was revealed that one of the zonal wavenumber components vanishes. The analytical balanced field was compared with the geopotential field which was obtained using a spherical harmonics spectral model. It was found that the normalized difference lied in the order of machine rounding, indicating the reliability of the analytical results. The stability of the sectoral mode of Rossby-Haurwitz wave and the associated balanced field was discussed, comparing with the flrst antisymmetric mode.