Take an isothermal hydrostatic reference atmosphere, , and linearize about rest. The horizontal acceleration and pressure-gradient force retain the equatorial Coriolis parameter , with . The traditional approximation retains only its vertical component. Quadratic perturbation advection is neglected. The vertical acceleration is balanced by perturbation buoyancy and pressure gradient after removing the reference hydrostatic balance.
The continuity constraint is the anelastic approximation, , giving . It retains stratification-driven expansion while filtering acoustic density fluctuations. It is therefore not the full compressible continuity equation. Adiabatic displacement in a stably stratified background gives , with the Brunt–Väisälä frequency; upward displacement develops restoring negative buoyancy.
Pressure convention matters. With the entropy-buoyancy equation just described, a consistent reduced-pressure form writes the pressure acceleration as , where . Its vertical term is , not simply . The original source explicitly specifies variable but prints the latter. Those differ by , so the two cannot silently be equated. Parts b and c display the consequence and then solve the explicitly corrected reduced-pressure model that yields the requested wave equation. This is a mathematical inconsistency in the printed set, not missing source material.
Apply the intended, corrected dispersion relation in c. A uniform mean zonal wind gives . Stationarity with therefore requires eastward intrinsic phase speed . With ,
The period determines and . Hence
Figure 1.
Equatorial trapping and vertical phase of the stationary Martian Kelvin-wave example
. The original calculation uses an eastward intrinsic speed of 20 metres per second. The Gaussian amplitude has a latitude scale of 11.6 degrees; the density-weighted vertical velocity has a vertical wavelength of 12.6 kilometres. The plotted negative vertical wavenumber corresponds to upward intrinsic energy propagation. Details.
A storm within roughly of the equator has substantial projection on the Gaussian mode. There is no sharp latitude cutoff: gives amplitude and the amplitude latitude is about . Forcing outside that core has progressively weaker overlap.
The intrinsic wave is eastward even though its observed ground pattern is stationary; westward advection cancels its phase propagation. Its intrinsic period is about Earth days. The inferred puts it in the short-vertical-wavelength branch, well below the long-wave speed . For upward energy radiation, must be positive, which selects for positive : vertical phase propagation is then downward. Dust absorption supplies thermal forcing with a zonally asymmetric component; the response does not imply that dust itself moves eastward at the intrinsic phase speed.
Southern spring to summer, the warmer perihelion-side dust season, is a reasonable climatological window for such a regional storm. This seasonal inference uses observed dust climatology, not the dispersion relation: the specified wind and wave parameters alone do not determine a unique season, and individual regional storms can occur outside that window.[ref]