Related papers: Model of deep zonal flows in giant planets
Convection in rotating spherical geometries is an important physical process in planetary and stellar systems. Using continuation methods at low Prandtl number, we find both strong equatorially asymmetric and symmetric polar nonlinear…
The atmospheres of the four giant planets of our Solar System share a common and well-observed characteristic: they each display patterns of planetary banding, with regions of different temperatures, composition, aerosol properties and…
Liu et al. 2008 discuss an important consideration for models of zonal winds deep within giant planets. However, the constraints they propose for the depth of the winds are based on their prescriptions for the internal structures of the…
Zonal flows are recognised to play a crucial role for magnetised plasma confinement. The genesis of these flows out of turbulent fluctuations is therefore of significant interest. We investigate the relative importance of zonal flow…
A model is presented that explains the `torsional oscillation' pattern of deviations in the solar rotation rate as a geostrophic flow. The flow is driven by temperature variations near the surface due to the enhanced emission of radiation…
The global scales of solar convection are studied through three-dimensional simulations of compressible convection carried out in spherical shells of rotating fluid which extend from the base of the convection zone to within 15 Mm of the…
Circulation-dominated solar dynamo models, which employ a helioseismic rotation profile and a fixed meridional flow, give a good approximation to the large scale solar magnetic phenomena, such as the 11-year cycle or the so called Hale's…
Large-scale plasma flows in the Sun's convection zone likely play a major role in solar dynamics on decadal timescales. In particular, quantifying meridional motions is a critical ingredient for understanding the solar cycle and the…
Observations of coronal jets increasingly suggest that local fragmentation and intermittency play an important role in the dynamics of these events. In this work we investigate this fragmentation in high-resolution simulations of jets in…
It is shown that magnetic islands generated by pressure-gradient-driven turbulence are common across a wide range of conditions. The interaction among turbulence, magnetic island and other large scale structures (the zonal flow and the…
Stably-stratified layers may be present at the top of the electrically-conducting fluid layers of many planets either because the temperature gradient is locally subadiabatic or because a stable composition gradient is maintained by the…
Recent measurements of Jupiter's gravitational field (by Juno) and seismology of Saturn's rings (by Cassini) strongly suggest that both planets have a stably-stratified core that still possesses a primordial gradient in the concentration of…
Flows in fluid layers are ubiquitous in industry, geophysics and astrophysics. Large-scale flows in thin layers can be considered two-dimensional (2d) with bottom friction added. Here we find that the properties of such flows depend…
Improving upon our purely dynamical work, we present three-dimensional simulations of the atmospheric circulation on Earth-like (exo)planets and hot Jupiters using the GFDL-Princeton Flexible Modeling System (FMS). As the first steps away…
Brown dwarfs and directly imaged giant planets exhibit significant evidence for active atmospheric circulation, which induces a large-scale patchiness in the cloud structure that evolves significantly over time, as evidenced by infrared…
Zonal flows in rotating systems have been previously shown to be suppressed by the imposition of a background magnetic field aligned with the direction of rotation. Understanding the physics behind the suppression may be important in…
We investigate the processes that lead to the generation of mean flows in two-dimensional anelastic convection. The simple model consists of a plane layer that is rotating about an axis inclined to gravity. The results are two-fold: firstly…
Tidal interactions are important in driving spin and orbital evolution in planetary and stellar binary systems, but the fluid dynamical mechanisms responsible remain incompletely understood. One key mechanism is the interaction between…
Hot Jupiters are Jupiter-sized exoplanets with close-in orbits, characterized by extreme day-night temperature contrasts due to synchronous rotation. These planets offer unique observational opportunities through transit photometry,…
The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…