Plumes in rotating convection. Part 1. Ensemble statistics and dynamical balances (Q4952218)

This paper studies hot plume structures for rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection using a conditionally sampled compositing technique. The authors examine heat mass and momentum balances, and compare the results obtained by using entraining thermal models with a non-rotating solution. The authors motivate their study by the need for models of parametrizations of convective mixing. Circulation in the oceans, atmospheres, giant planets and stars depends crucially on convectively driven transport of heat and tracers, but the scales at which such transport occurs are too small to be explicitly modelled if the largest scales are captured. The authors find many differences between non-rotating and rotating plumes in their transport of mass, buoyancy and momentum. Thus, it is shown that the expansion of turbulent plumes by entrainment of exterior fluid can be suppressed by strong rotation. Another new result is the quantification of continuous mixing between the plume end ambient fluid, which occurs at high rotation without any changes in plume volume. The analysis of this paper could be important for applications in atmospheric and oceanic convection.