| Abstract: | The governing equations describing baroclinic bottom-trapped fronts in a channel with variable bottom topography are shown to be a noncanonical Hamiltonian system. The Hamiltonian formalism is exploited to derive a variational principle for arbitrary steady solutions based on an appropriately constrained energy functional. The variational principle is exploited to obtain formal and nonlinear stability conditions. In the infinitesimal amplitude limit, these stability conditions reduce to previously obtained normal mode results for the transverse gradient of the mean frontal potential vorticity. |
