The nonlinear response of a barotropic, nondivergent, spherical flow representative of the upper troposphere (but without a tropical Hadley cell) to localized, extratropical topographic forcing is examined using high-resolution contour surgery calculations. The response is shown to vary greatly with forcing amplitude and can be significantly different from the linear response. At large amplitude, Rossby wave breaking occurs in the tropics irrespective of the direction of the equatorial winds, and leads to small-scale stirring and the formation of a “tropical surf zone,” which inhibits the meridional propagation of the disturbance.
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Waugh et al. (1994) studied this question.