Mechanical forcing of low‐latitude zonal flow variations. Panels (a) and (c) show the forced zonal flow considering no change of the meridional flow (solving the equation for ﹩\Omega _{1}﹩ for the fixed reference state flow), while (b) and (d) show the zonal flow solving the full system. Panels (a) and (b) use a forcing function with ﹩r_{0}=0.75﹩ R_⊙, ﹩\theta _{0}=80^{\circ }﹩, (c) and (d) with ﹩r_{0}=0.95\ R_{\odot }﹩, ﹩\theta _{0}=65^{\circ }﹩. While (a) and (c) show a zonal flow that closely resembles the properties of the forcing function [especially the 25° inclination in (a)], the results shown in (b) and (d) are strongly influenced by rotation. The flow pattern becomes strongly aligned with the axis of rotation, and also the amplitude of the zonal flow band with slower rotation is significantly smaller than the faster zonal band.