Available potential vorticity and the wave-vortex decomposition for arbitrary stratification

Abstract: We consider a rotating non-hydrostatic flow with arbitrary stratification and argue that 1) the appropriate form of potential vorticity (PV) for this system is in terms of isopycnal deviation and 2) the decomposition into energetically orthogonal solutions is fundamentally a PV-inversion. The new closed-form expression for available potential vorticity (APV) is expressed in terms of isopycnal deviation, following the ideas in Wagner & Young (2015). This form of APV linearizes to quasigeostrophic PV (QGPV) after discarding the nonlinear stretching term and a height nonlinearity, the latter of which is not present in constant stratification. This formulation leads to positive definite definitions of potential enstrophy and total energy expressed in terms of isopycnal deviation, from which the quadratic versions emerge at lowest order. It is exactly these quantities diagonalized by the linear eigenmodes. Internal-gravity waves, geostrophic motions, inertial oscillations, and a mean density anomaly form the energetically and enstrophically orthogonal constituents of flow. The complete state of the fluid can be represented in terms of these physically realizeable modes and determined from the derived projection operators using the horizontal velocity and density anomaly. The projection of the fluid state onto the non-hydrostatic wave modes, reveals that one must first account for the PV portion of the flow before recovering the wave solutions. We apply the physical insights of the decomposition to a mesoscale eddy showing how strict adherence to adiabatic rearrangement places strong constraints on the vertical structure of such eddies, including a skew towards stronger cyclonic eddies in the upper water-column. Finally, the expression for APV is shown to reproduce the height nonlinearity of shallow-water PV, a well know feature that breaks the cyclone-anticyclone symmetry in QGPV.