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Impact of domain anisotropy on the inverse cascade in geostrophic turbulent convection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2018

Keith Julien Open the ORCID record for Keith Julien [Opens in a new window] ,
Edgar Knobloch  and
Meredith Plumley
Keith Julien*
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
Edgar Knobloch
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Meredith Plumley
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: julien@colorado.edu
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Abstract

The effect of domain anisotropy on the inverse cascade occurring within the geostrophic turbulence regime of rapidly rotating Rayleigh–Bénard convection is investigated. In periodic domains with square cross-section in the horizontal, a domain-filling dipole state is present. For rectangular periodic domains, a Kolmogorov-like flow parallel to the short side and consisting of a periodic array of alternating unidirectional jets with embedded vortices is observed, together with an underlying weak meandering transverse jet. Similar transitions occurring in weakly dissipative two-dimensional flows driven by externally imposed small-amplitude noise and in classical hydrostatic geostrophic turbulence are a consequence of inviscid conservation of energy and potential enstrophy, and can be understood using statistical mechanics considerations. Rotating Rayleigh–Bénard convection represents an important three-dimensional system with only one inviscid invariant which nonetheless exhibits large-scale structures driven by intrinsically generated fluctuations.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Geostrophic turbulence Geophysical and Geological Flows: Quasi-geostrophic flows
Type
JFM Rapids
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 837 , 25 February 2018 , R4
Copyright
© 2018 Cambridge University Press 

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