Beta-induced transition of strong isolated eddies

Strong eddies on the β plane are considered within the framework of the one-layer primitive equations. The attention is focused on calculating the β-induced changes to the spatial structure of the eddy, as well as the speed of its translation. In contrast to the earlier studies, the results of this paper are valid for eddies with Ro ∼ 1 and are applicable to both lenses and eddies in a layer of nonzero average depth. It is demonstrated that no steady solution exists for eddies translating at a speed inside the Rossby-wave speed range, reflecting that such eddies must radiate and lose energy. In addition to the speed restriction, steadily translating eddies must satisfy a certain constraint imposed on their far-field asymptotics.