P41A-2036
Internal Wave Generation by Turbulent Convection
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Daniel Lecoanet1, Michael Le Bars2, Keaton J Burns3, Geoffrey M Vasil4, Eliot Quataert1, Benjamin P. Brown5 and Jeffrey Oishi6, (1)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (2)CNRS, Paris Cedex 16, France, (3)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, (4)University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, (5)Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, United States
Abstract:
Recent measurements suggest that a portion of the Earth's core may be stably stratified. If this is the case, then the Earth's core joins the many planetary and stellar objects which have a stably stratified region adjacent to a convective region. The stably stratified region admits internal gravity waves which can transport angular momentum, energy, and affect magnetic field generation. We describe experiments & simulations of convective excitation of internal waves in water, exploiting its density maximum at 4C. The simulations show that waves are excited within the bulk of the convection zone, opposed to at the interface between the convective and stably stratified regions. We will also present 3D simulations using a compressible fluid. These simulations provide greater freedom in choosing the thermal equilibrium of the system, and are run at higher Rayleigh number.
