On the instability of some upward propagating, exact, nonlinear mountain waves

Using the short-wavelength instability method, we investigate the linear instability of an exact solution describing upward-propagating mountain waves, derived in A.~Constantin, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. (2023), for a dry and adiabatic compressible flow. Within this approach, the stability problem reduces to the analysis of a system of ordinary differential equations with periodic coefficients along the fluid trajectories, which we study by means of Floquet theory. We show that the Floquet multipliers are of the form \1,μ,μ⁻¹\, the multiplier $1$ being associated with the conservation of potential vorticity, so that stability is decided by a single discriminant, which coincides with that of a Hill equation. For neutral stratification the flow is unstable whenever the wave steepness exceeds the critical value 1/3, while a weakly stable stratification lowers this threshold to 1/3-4/9ν²+O(ν⁴), $ν$ being the ratio between the Brunt--Väisälä frequency and the orbital frequency of the air parcels. The instability is a subharmonic parametric resonance. Since the solution is given in Lagrangian coordinates, these results identify an unstable region in the upper part of the laminar layer, beneath the tropopause, where the wave is steepest.