Rapidly Rotating Wall-Mode Convection

Abstract

In the rapidly rotating limit, we derive a balanced set of reduced equations governing the strongly nonlinear development of the convective wall-mode instability in the interior of a general container. The model illustrates that wall-mode convection is a multiscale phenomenon where the dynamics of the bulk interior diagnostically determine the small-scale dynamics within Stewartson boundary layers at the sidewalls. The sidewall boundary layers feedback on the interior via a nonlinear lateral heat-flux boundary condition, providing a closed system. Outside the asymptotically thin boundary layer, the convective modes connect to a dynamical interior that maintains scales set by the domain geometry. In many ways, the final system of equations resembles boundary-forced planetary geostrophic baroclinic dynamics coupled with barotropic quasi-geostrophic vorticity. The reduced system contains the results from previous linear instability theory but captured in an elementary fashion, providing a new avenue for investigating wall-mode convection in the strongly nonlinear regime. We also derive the dominant Ekman-flux correction to the onset Rayleigh number for large Taylor number, $\textit{Ra} \approx 31.8 \,\textit{Ta}^{1/2} - 4.43 \,\textit{Ta}^{5/12} + \mathcal{O}(\textit{Ta}^{1/3})$ for no-slip boundaries. However, we find that the linear onset in a finite cylinder differs noticeably compared to a Cartesian channel. We demonstrate some of the reduced model's nonlinear dynamics with numerical simulations in a cylindrical container.