Nonlinear Evolution of Global Hydrodynamic Shallow-Water Instability in Solar Tachocline

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonlinear hydrodynamic shallow-water model of the solar tachocline, revealing how differential rotation and disturbances generate jets, gravity waves, and influence the tachocline's dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a fully nonlinear, semi-implicit spectral model of the solar tachocline that captures complex hydrodynamic interactions and stability properties.

Findings

High latitude jets form from unstable disturbances.

Reynolds stresses drive differential rotation evolution.

Disturbance energy concentrates in low wavenumbers.

Abstract

We present a fully nonlinear hydrodynamic 'shallow water' model of the solar tachocline. The model consists of a global spherical shell of differentially rotating fluid, which has a deformable top, thus allowing motions in radial directions along with latitude and longitude directions. When the system is perturbed, in the course of its nonlinear evolution it can generate unstable low-frequency shallow-water shear modes from the differential rotation, high-frequency gravity waves, and their interactions. Radiative and overshoot tachoclines are characterized in this model by high and low effective gravity values respectively. Building a semi-implicit spectral scheme containing very low numerical diffusion, we perform nonlinear evolution of shallow-water modes. Our first results show that, (i) high latitude jets or polar spin-up occurs due to nonlinear evolution of unstable hydrodynamic shallow-water disturbances and differential rotation, (ii) Reynolds stresses in the disturbances together with changing shell-thickness and meridional flow are responsible for the evolution of differential rotation, (iii) disturbance energy primarily remains concentrated in the lowest longitudinal wavenumbers, (iv) an oscillation in energy between perturbed and unperturbed states occurs due to evolution of these modes in a nearly dissipation-free system, and (v) disturbances are geostrophic, but occasional nonadjustment in geostrophic balance can occur, particularly in the case of high effective gravity, leading to generation of gravity waves. We also find that a linearly stable differential rotation profile remains nonlinearly stable.