ATMOSPHERIC BOUNDARY LAYER IN EQUATORIAL AREA

A system of linearized equations which describe the motion in the tropical boundary layer and their solutions are given in this paper. If the interaction between the boundary layer and the free atmosphere is taken into consideration, the potential height of the free atmosphere cannot be entirely independent of the character of the boundary layer. From this point of veiw, the continuous and bounded solutions of the boundary layer are obtained by imposing some suitable conditions to the field of potential height and thus the difficulty that the vertical velocity at the critical latitude tends to infinity can be overcome. Furthermore, a new result that the variation of the wind with height in the boundary layer at the critical latitude is not in the form of classical Ekman spiral is obtained. And this is also supported by the result obtained under the assumption of the so-called well-mlxed condition proposed by Mahrt.