Core flows and heat transfer induced by inhomogeneous cooling with sub- and supercritical convection

Abstract

The amount and spatial pattern of heat extracted from cores of terrestrial planets is ultimately controlled by the thermal structure of the lower rocky mantle. Using the most common model to tackle this problem, a rapidly rotating and differentially cooled spherical shell containing an incompressible and viscous liquid is numerically investigated. To gain the physical basics, we consider a simple, equatorial symmetric perturbation of the CMB heat flux shaped as a spherical harmonic $Y_{11}$. The thermodynamic properties of the induced flows mainly depend on the degree of nonlinearity parametrised by a horizontal Rayleigh number $Ra_h=q^\ast Ra$, where $q^\ast$ is the relative CMB heat flux anomaly amplitude and $Ra$ is the Rayleigh number which controls radial buoyancy-driven convection. Depending on $Ra_h$ we characterise three flow regimes through their spatial patterns, heat transport and flow speed scalings: in the linear conductive regime the radial inward flow is found to be phase shifted $90^\circ$ eastwards from the maximal heat flux as predicted by a linear quasi-geostrophic model for rapidly rotating spherical systems. The advective regime is characterised by an increased $Ra_h$ where nonlinearities become significant, but is still subcritical to radial convection. There the upwelling is dispersed and the downwelling is compressed by the thermal advection into a spiralling jet-like structure. As $Ra_h$ becomes large enough for the radial convection to set in, the jet remains identifiable on time-average and significantly alters the global heat budget in the convective regime. Our results suggest, that the boundary forcing not only introduces a net horizontal heat transport but also suppresses the convection locally to such an extent, that the net Nusselt number is reduced by up to 50\%, even though the mean CMB heat flux is conserved.