  In this paper, we study the linear inviscid damping for the linearized
$\beta$-plane equation around shear flows. We develop a new method to give the
explicit decay rate of the velocity for a class of monotone shear flows. This
method is based on the space-time estimate and the vector field method in sprit
of the wave equation. For general shear flows including the Sinus flow, we also
prove the linear damping by establishing the limiting absorption principle,
which is based on the compactness method introduced by Wei-Zhang-Zhao in
\cite{WZZ2}. The main difficulty is that the Rayleigh-Kuo equation has more
singular points due to the Coriolis effects so that the compactness argument
becomes more involved and delicate.
