Meridional view of the least-damped baroclinic mode. Left: streamlines of the meridional velocity; middle: azimuthal velocity; right: temperature perturbation. In the middle and right panels, solid lines indicate the change of sign of the field. The solution is associated with the eigenvalue λ=−8.653×10⁻³ obtained with parameters E = 0, E_t = 10⁻³, N = 1, and numerical resolution L_max = 50, N_r = 50.