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The Geostrophic Regime of Rotating Rayleigh-Bènard Convection

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We report on experimental measurements of rotating Rayleigh-Bènard convection in the geostrophic régime where the convective Rossby number Ro is much less than one. In particular, we explore the scaling of heat transport from the onset of convection up to the transition to boundary-layer dominated turbulent convection. We also characterize the nature of vortical coherent structures using local temperature measurements and thermo-chromic liquid crystal flow visualization.

Author(s):

Robert Ecke    
Los Alamos National Laboratory
United States

Scott Backhaus    
Los Alamos National Laboratory
United States