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When a zonal current varies slowly compared with the wavelength, freeze its velocity and background potential vorticity gradient locally in the Rossby-wave equation for a sheared zonal current. The resulting local dispersion relation includes curvature $U^{\prime \prime }$ and, for a free surface, the basic surface-slope contribution $U/R_D^2$. In the nondivergent limit it becomes $\omega =kU-k(\beta -U^{\prime \prime })/(k^2+l^2)$.

A reduced long-wave convection model can combine linear damping, destabilizing second derivatives, stabilizing fourth derivatives and gradient nonlinearities. In the displayed normalization the quadratic coefficient $s$ breaks Boussinesq symmetry, while the cubic gradient term dissipates the mean-square temperature. The linear dispersion relation is $\lambda (k)=-1+\mu k^2-k^4$, with critical wavenumber $k=1$ at $\mu =2$. Smoothness and spatial averaging hypotheses must be specified before applying the energy method on an infinite interval.