Physical Oceanography

No. of pages in text. (118) The discovery of multiple nearly zonal oceanic jets enriches the classical view of mid-latitude ocean circulation, which was thought to be dominated by turbulent eddies and large-scale oceanic gyres. These jets emerge as a result of baroclinic insta-bility and are maintained by baroclinic eddies. Potential importance of interactions of these ocean currents with major topographic features, such as the mid-Atlantic ridge, calls for the studies of the effects of bottom topography on the dynamics of eddies and the eddy-driven jets. The importance of bottom topography in the linear baroclinic instability of zonal flows on the β-plane is examined by using analytical calculations and a quasi-geostrophic (QG) eddy-resolving numerical model. The particular focus is on the effects of a zonal topographic slope, which are compared with the effects of a meridional slope. A zonal slope always destabilizes background zonal flows that are otherwise stable in the absence of topography, regardless of the slope magnitude, whereas the merid-ional slopes stabilize/destabilize zonal flows only through changing the lower-leve