Spontaneous Generation of Low-Frequency Modes of Variability in the Wind-Driven Ocean Circulation

In idealized models that aim to understand the temporal variability of the wind-driven ocean circulation, low-frequency instabilities associated with so-called oscillatory gyre modes have been found. For the double-gyre case, the spectral origin of these modes as well as the physical mechanism of the instability is explained. In a barotropic quasigeostrophic model, the low-frequency modes arise spontaneously from the merging between two nonoscillatory eigenmodes. Of the latter two, one is called here the P-mode and is responsible for the existence of multiple steady states. The other is called the L-mode and it controls the intensity of the gyres. This merging turns out to be robust over a hierarchy of models and can even be found in a low-order truncated quasigeostrophic model. The latter model is used to determine the physical mechanism of the instability. The low-frequency oscillation results from the conjugate effects of shear- and symmetry-breaking instabilities and is free of Rossby wave dynamics.