A SERIES SOLUTION OF THE NONLINEAR WIND-DRIVEN OCEAN CIRCULATION AND ITS INERTIAL LIMIT

A series solution approach to the forced and damped quasi-geostrophic barotropic vorticity equation is considered in order to examine the st rongly forced and inertial limits of ocean gyre dynamics. The strongly forced limit is the limit investigated numerically by Veronis (1966b) . It is shown that this limit, although superficially having the same symmetry properties as the inertial limit, is distinguishably differen t from the latter. After isolating the inertial limit in an appropriat e way it is shown that our series solution method is able to find the 'free mode' and its 'almost free correction', that the 'free mode' obe ys the integral criteria of Niiler (1966) and Pierrehumbert and Malguz zi (1984) and that the relationship between the streamfunction and the absolute vorticity is in general a nonlinear one.