Waves in nature always interact with each other. In this paper, Rossby waves in two layers fluid with dissipation and exogenous are studied. Form the dimensionless baroclinic quasi-geostrophic vortex equations include exogenous and dissipative, the new (2+1)-dimensional coupled ZK-mZK equations are established. Based on the semi-inverse and Agrawal's method, the time-fractional equations are derived. Then, their conservation laws are analyzed, which may provide bases for the theoretical study. Finally, the exact and numerical solutions of the time-fractional coupled ZK-mZK equations are discussed. By comparison, the alternative variational iteration method gives a high-precision numerical solution of the time-fractional coupled ZK-mZK equations. Further, the solutions show that Rossby waves in two layers fluid change with the change of time, order of fractional derivative and coefficient of coupling term. INDEX TERMS two layers fluid, Rossby waves, time-fractional coupled ZK-mZK equations, alternative variational iteration method