1068 KELVIN–HELMHOLTZ INSTABILITY
internal equatorial Kelvin waves except that the large
vertical scale of the MJO implies a faster phase speed
than is observed. Arguments involving coupling with
equatorial westward-traveling Rossby waves and
interaction with the release of latent heat in the
disturbances as well as viscous damping have been
invoked to explain the observed slow phase speed.
See also
Dynamic Meteorology: Waves. El Niño and the South-
ern Oscillation: Observation; Theory. Middle Atmos-
phere: Quasi-Biennial Oscillation. Ocean Circulation:
Surface–Wind Driven Circulation. Rossby Waves. Trop-
ical Meteorology: Equatorial Waves; Intra-seasonal Os-
cillation (Madden–Julian Oscillation).
KELVIN–HELMHOLTZ INSTABILITY
P G Drazin, University of Bath, England, UK
Copyright 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
Kelvin–Helmholtz instability is the name given, since
the 1940s, to an instability of a shear layer in a fluid,
which is the mechanism of many phenomena observed
in the atmosphere and oceans. It is said that in 1868 the
German physiologist and physicist Hermann von
Helmholtz first recognized the instability of a shear
layer, by writing that ‘every perfect geometrically
sharp edge by which a fluid flows must tear it asunder
and establish a surface of separation, however slowly
the fluid may move’, although this remark may seem to
denote merely recognition of separation of a flow at an
edge. However, in 1871 the British physicist William
Thomson, Helmholtz’s friend who was later ennobled
as Lord Kelvin, posed mathematically, and solved
fully, a prototypical problem of linear instability of a
horizontal vortex sheet between the uniform moving
layers of two fluids of different densities, in an attempt
to model the formation of ocean waves by the wind.
Later, Helmholtz developed this model and applied it to
the formation of billow clouds. At the same time the
British physicist Lord Rayleigh was developing the
theory of the instability of a shear layer, that is a parallel
flow in which the fluid speed varies across the layer.
These ideas were developed, extended, and applied
in the twentieth century. An especially important
extension is the instability of a horizontal shear layer
in a stratified fluid, that is a fluid whose density varies
with height, because this models more realistically the
Further Reading
Cushman-Roison B (1994) An Introduction to Geophysical
Fluid Dynamics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Gill AE (1982) Atmosphere–Ocean Dynamics. New York:
Academic Press.
Holton JR (1992) Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology,
3rd edn. San Diego: Academic Press.
LeBlonde PH and Lawrence AM (1978) Waves in the Ocean.
New York: Elsevier.
Matsuno T (1966) Quasi-geostrophic motion in the equa-
torial area. Journal of the Meteorological Society of
Japan 44: 25–42.
Pedlosky J (1987) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics. Berlin:
Springer-Verlag.
Philander SG (1990) El Niño, La Niña and the Southern
Oscillation. New York: Academic Press.
mechanism of billow clouds, clear air turbulence, and
other similar phenomena in the atmosphere.
The visionary British meteorologist Lewis Richard-
son recognized in the 1920s that atmospheric turbu-
lence could be maintained only if the inertial
instability due to shear could overcome the static
stability due to heavier air being beneath lighter air.
The essence of his argument can be recapitulated in
terms of the energetics of the instability of a horizontal
shear layer in a stratified fluid, as follows. Suppose
then that a basic flow of an incompressible inviscid
fluid of variable density has velocity UðzÞi and density
rðzÞ, where i is a horizontal unit vector and z is the
height. The essential mechanism of the instability is
the conversion of the available kinetic energy of
relative motion of the horizontal layers of the fluid
into kinetic energy of a perturbation, overcoming the
potential energy needed to raise or lower fluid when
dr=dz
0 everywhere, that is when light fluid is
always above heavier. Thus shear tends to destabilize
and buoyancy to stabilize the flow. To quantify these
tendencies, suppose that two neighbouring fluid par-
ticles of equal volume, at heights z and z þ dz, are
somehow interchanged. Then the increment of work
dW per unit volume needed to overcome gravity and
effect this interchange is
dW ¼ gdrdz
where g is the acceleration due to gravity and
dr ¼ ðdr=dzÞdz. In order that the horizontal momen-
tum of the inviscid fluid is conserved in the inter-
change, the particle initially at height z will plausibly
have final velocity intermediate between the velocities
 KELVIN–HELMHOLTZ INSTABILITY 1069

of the ambient fluid at its initial and final levels, say z

ðU þ kdUÞi, so that the other particle has final velocity
½U þ ð1  kÞdUi in order to conserve linear momen-
tum, where dU ¼ ðdU=dzÞdz and k is some number
between 0 and 1. Then the increment of kinetic energy
dT per unit volume released by the interchange is U1
U(z)
O U2
dT ¼ 12rU2 þ 12ðr þ drÞðU þ dUÞ2  12rðU þ kdUÞ2
 12ðr þ drÞ½U þ ð1  kÞdU2
¼ kð1  kÞrðdUÞ2 þ kUdUdr

on neglecting higher-order terms in drðdUÞ2 . For small

(A)
increments,
dT ¼ kð1  kÞrðdUÞ2 z

on neglecting the inertial effects of the variation of density

(this is a good approximation for instability in the
atmosphere because the buoyancy effects of the variation
of density there are almost always much greater). Thus,

2

1
dU 2 1 dU 2
(z)
dT ¼ kð1  kÞr ðdzÞ
r ðdzÞ2 O
2
dz 4 dz
with equality holding for k ¼ 12 . Now a necessary
condition for there being enough energy to effect this
interchange, and hence for instability to occur, is that
dW
dT, and therefore that

 (B)
dr 1 dU 2
g
r Figure 1 Sketch of (a) velocity and (b) density profiles in Kelvin’s
dz 4 dz basic flow of two horizontal layers of fluid.
somewhere in the field of flow, or that
RiðzÞ
14
Theory and Experiments
where the local Richardson number is defined as the
dimensionless quantity Now let us go back to Kelvin’s problem, and see a few
gdr=dz of its details. Suppose that a basic horizontal flow of an
RiðzÞ   incompressible inviscid fluid is given by
rðdU=dzÞ2
  
This criterion, namely that RiðzÞ
14 somewhere in U2 r2 z>0
UðzÞ ¼ ; r¼ for
the flow, is a necessary condition for instability of the U1 r1 zo 0
given basic flow, and so RiðzÞ > 14 everywhere in the
flow is a sufficient condition for stability; it is called
Richardson’s criterion. The above argument for an
incompressible inviscid fluid may be adapted for a
perfect gas in adiabatic motion, and so for air in the
atmosphere, by replacing the density by the potential
density, and this leads again to Richardson’s criterion
but with the Richardson number redefined as


2
g dT dU
RiðzÞ  þG
T dz dz
where T is the absolute temperature and G the
Figure 2 Kelvin’s cat’s-eye pattern. This shows the streamlines
adiabatic lapse rate. For a perfect gas G ¼ g=cp , where near the level where the phase velocity of the waves equals the
cp is the specific heat at constant pressure. In fact, basic velocity of a smoothly varying profile of a homogeneous
G  8 K per kilometer in the troposphere. inviscid fluid.
1070 KELVIN–HELMHOLTZ INSTABILITY

This gives a vortex sheet at z ¼ 0, as sketched in where k and l are given horizontal wavenumbers in the
Figure 1. Kelvin was motivated by the special case with x- and y-directions (so the wavelengths in these
r2  r1 to model wind blowing on an ocean current. directions are 2p=k and 2p=l, respectively). He de-
We may anticipate the occurrence of internal gravity duced, by solving an eigenvalue problem, that
waves in the special case with U2 ¼ U1 . In any event,
"
Kelvin took an irrotational flow coupled to a pertur-
r1 U1 þ r2 U2 k2 r1 r2 ðU1  U2 Þ2
bation of the profile of the vortex sheet, and resolved s ¼  ik 
r1 þ r2 ðr1 þ r2 Þ2
the perturbation into independent normal modes, with
its flow quantities proportional to (or rather the real  1=2 #1=2
parts of functions proportional to) g k2 þ l 2 ðr1  r2 Þ

exp½iðkx þ lyÞ þ st r1 þ r 2

Figure 3 (A) Photograph of instability of a shear layer. The lower stream of water moves leftwards faster than the dyed upper stream.
Photograph of F. A. Roberts, P. E. Dimotakis and A. Roshko recorded by Van Dyke (1982) An Album of Fluid Motion. Stanford, CA:
Parabolic Press. (B) Photograph of instability of a stratified shear layer. The long rectangular tube is filled with water above dyed brine.
After the fluid came to rest the tube was suddenly tilted to create the shear layer with downward acceleration of the brine and upward
acceleration of the water. The upper stream of water is moving rightwards, and the lower stream of brine leftwards. Photograph of S. A.
Thorpe recorded by Van Dyke (1982) An Album of Fluid Motion. Stanford, CA: Parabolic Press.

Expressing s ¼ s  io in real and imaginary parts, we
identify o as the frequency of the mode, and s as its
relative growth rate. It follows that if
k2 r1 r2 ðU1  U2 Þ2 > gðk2 þ l2 Þ1=2 ðr1  r2 Þðr1 þ r2 Þ
then this mode may grow exponentially with
" #1=2
k2 r1 r2 ðU1  U2 Þ2 gðk2 þ l2 Þ1=2 ðr1  r2 Þ
s¼ 
ðr1 þ r2 Þ2 r1 þ r2
and the x-component of its phase velocity is the mass-
mean basic velocity
o r1 U1 þ r2 U2
¼ layer with an e-folding time of about s1  100 s.
k r1 þ r2
Now the flow is unstable if any one mode grows
exponentially, and so if s > 0 for any pair of real
values k and l. But the formula above shows that s > 0
for some modes with large values of k, provided that
U2 6¼ U1 and r1 ; r2 > 0, and therefore that all such
two-layer flows are unstable to short waves. However,
Kelvin himself showed that surface tension, as well as
buoyancy, could in fact stabilize the flow. (In passing,
one may note that the above formula for s gives the
velocity of internal gravity waves at the interface of
two fluids when U2 ¼ U1 .)
In 1931, Sydney Goldstein, Bernhard Haurwitz,
and Geoffrey Taylor independently generalized
Figure 4 A row of billow clouds photographed by Paul E. Branstine. For the meteorological data see Drazin PG and Reid WH (1981)
Hydrodynamic Stability, p. 22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
KELVIN–HELMHOLTZ INSTABILITY 1071
Kelvin’s model to deal with basic velocity and density
profiles varying smoothly with height. Their results for
various shear layers seemed to support Richardson’s
criterion, but John Miles and Louis Howard con-
firmed Richardson’s criterion mathematically in the
1960s. Typical relative growth rates of a shear layer
are found to be s  jU2  U1 j=10L when the Richard-
son number is appreciably less than a quarter (note
that, by Richardson’s criterion, s ¼ 0 if RiðzÞ  14
everywhere), where L is the thickness of the layer.
Taking jU2  U1 j ¼ 10 m s1 and L ¼ 100 m, as order
of magnitude estimates for billow-cloud formation,
we see that the linear instability breaks up the shear
Thus Kelvin–Helmholtz instability is a transient
process in the atmosphere. The transience presents
one way to distinguish billow clouds from lee-wave
clouds, which are forced orographically.
In 1880 Kelvin himself examined the streamlines
due to instability of a shear layer of an unstratified
fluid, and found what is now called the Kelvin’s cat’s-
eye pattern, shown in Figure 2. Taylor showed in 1931
that for a stratified fluid the regions of closed stream-
lines alternate at slightly different levels.
As the sinusoidal waves of the linear instability
grow, nonlinearity will moderate the growth. A vortex
sheet and a shear layer will then begin to roll up,
as shown in Figure 3. Of course, instability in the
1072 KINEMATICS
atmosphere is not so neat as in the careful laboratory
experiments of Figure 3.
Atmospheric Phenomena
Kelvin–Helmholtz instability occurs in the atmos-
phere as a sporadic, but widespread, phenomenon. It is
usually invisible, and so can be dangerous as clear air
turbulence. But it can be detected by radar or seen by
chance as billow clouds when the humidity is such that
the rising air in a vortex leads to condensation as cloud
and the falling air leads to evaporation (see Figure 4).
When seen at an angle, the lines of billow clouds are
often called a ‘mackerel sky’; this is because of their
resemblance to the pattern on the back of a mackerel,
the North Atlantic fish.
Kelvin–Helmholtz instability is not only of local
significance. It, and the turbulence into which it
usually develops, play an important role in the energy
budget of the atmosphere by transferring energy from
the larger to smaller scales of motion until it is finally
dissipated as heat by viscosity.
KINEMATICS
D D Houghton, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Madison, WI, USA
Copyright 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
Kinematics, when applied to the atmosphere, refers to
the description of both air motion and the motion of
patterns describing other properties of air, such as
moisture content, temperature, and pressure. This
description is without regard to forces and other
physical processes that cause the motions. Air motion
itself is an important causal factor for many of the
pattern changes of the other properties of the air. Daily
sequences of weather maps showing horizontal wind
flow and the movement of patterns in pressure and
temperature dramatize the kinematic perspective of
the atmosphere.
This article presents an overview of atmospheric
kinematics as follows. First, we look at a brief
historical perspective. Then, basic characteristics and
descriptors for air motion are reviewed. Finally,
examples of the wide range of applications of kine-
matic analysis for the atmosphere are presented.
Further, it has been conjectured that shear instabil-
ity in the absence of buoyancy plays a fundamental
role in turbulence itself.
See also
Buoyancy and Buoyancy Waves: Theory. Clear Air
Turbulence. Clouds: Climatology. Dynamic Meteorol-
ogy: Waves. Instability: Inertial Instability; Symmetric
Stability. Lee Waves and Mountain Waves. Turbu-
lence, Two Dimensional.
Further Reading
Drazin PG and Reid WH (1981) Hydrodynamic Stability,
§§4, 44, Chap. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Faber TE (1995) Fluid Dynamics for Physicists, §§8.11, 8.12.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Green J (1999) Atmospheric Dynamics, chapter 6. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Dyke M (1982) An Album of Fluid Motion, photos 145–
147. Stanford, CA: Parabolic Press.
History
Studies of the kinematics of air motion date back to the
advent of observing system networks for wind which
first became available in the nineteenth century over
parts of Europe and the United States. Kinematics was
applied to early studies of the extratropical cyclone.
Historical presentations by Kutzbach in 1979 and
Eliassen in 1999 document how the analysis and
development of theory for these cyclones depended on
the kinematics of the surface wind field. In particular,
conflicting theories were resolved by noting whether
the dominant surface wind flow was primarily con-
vergent, rotational, or confluent – three of the impor-
tant basic air motion descriptors of atmospheric
kinematics to be discussed later.
Weather map depictions of the atmosphere became
common in the twentieth century. Kinematics became
a basic analysis perspective not only for wind fields but
also for describing the motions of weather map
patterns, such as the movement of pressure isobars,
and weather fronts. The determination of large-scale
vertical motion (a quantity that could not be measured
directly) was an important application of kinematics.
Using a kinematic method, vertical motion was