Put and use amplitudes proportional to . Zonal momentum gives
while incompressibility, buoyancy evolution, and hydrostatic balance give
Hence
Meridional geostrophic balance requires
so
Decay as , together with and , requires . Therefore
The negative-frequency root makes the Gaussian exponent positive and the solution diverge away from the equator. The acceptable branch is the eastward Equatorial Kelvin wave.
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.
Every forced propagating mode must have the imposed zonal frequency
For , only the Equatorial Kelvin wave has the correct sign. Upward group velocity in the fluid selects
With , its pressure field can be written
Here , , and the complex vertical-velocity amplitude is
The lower boundary is matched only if
after choosing the phase of to make the prescribed cosine amplitude real.
For , the upward-radiating Equatorial Rossby waves have
Choose each pair as in part c for this . The propagating sum is
The other fields follow mode by mode from part c and . Thus the boundary matching condition is
For , the space of upward-radiating wave profiles is only the one-dimensional Gaussian Kelvin profile, so a generic cannot be matched by propagating waves. Its Kelvin projection radiates upward; the remaining forcing produces a balanced, vertically evanescent response trapped near the lower boundary. This is the equatorial analogue of the fact that quasi-geostrophic Rossby waves have westward rather than eastward phase propagation.
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.