How I learned to love normal-mode Rossby–Haurwitz Waves

Among these waves were normal-mode Rossby-Haurwitz waves (NMRHWs). What follows is, first, a brief outline of how the influence of these developments on analyses of data collected during the Line Islands Experiment led to work on NMRHWs.

Next, theoretical expectations of free NMRHWs as described by Kasahara and Kasahara and Puri in the early 1980s are discussed. Finally, spectral analyses of observed vorticity fields are presented for easy comparison with those expectations. The similarity between these relatively simple model predictions and observations is unique in meteorology, where complexity is the general rule.