Baroclinic instability of zonally forced ow in a two mode quasi-geostrophic numerical model with periodic boundary conditions is considered. Only the largest scale of the baroclinic mode is forced and the scale dependence of a diffusive parameterization of baroclinic layer thickness is determined. It is shown that the effect of baroclinic instability is a decreasing function of scale with an exponent of about half of that corresponding to the commonly used Laplace operator. We furthermore show that there is no linear relation between the time averaged amplitude of the large scale streamfunction (or quasi-geostrophicpotential vorticity) and the bolus velocity.