Resonant excitation and nonlinear evolution of waves in the equatorial waveguide in the presence of the mean current.

We study interactions of planetary waves propagating across the equator with trapped Rossby or Yanai modes, and the mean flow. The equatorial waveguide with a mean current acts as a resonator and responds to planetary waves with certain wave numbers by making the trapped modes grow. Thus excited waves reach amplitudes greatly exceeding the amplitude of the incoming wave. Nonlinear saturation of the excited waves is described by an amplitude equation with one or two attracting equilibrium solutions. In the latter case spatial modulation leads to formation of characteristic defects in the wave field. The evolution of the envelopes of long trapped Rossby waves is governed by the driven complex Ginzburg-Landau equation, and by the damped-driven nonlinear Schrödinger equation for short waves. The envelopes of the Yanai waves obey a simple wave equation with cubic nonlinearity.