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Preliminary Concepts
Published in Hillel Rubin, Joseph Atkinson, Environmental Fluid Mechanics, 2001
of dye divided at the point S, while appearing to belong to a column of fluid extending over the depth of the cylinder. This column of fluid is called a Taylor column. Taylor’s experiment indicated that bodies moving slowly in a strongly rotating system of homogeneous fluid carry along their motion in a two-dimensional column of fluid.
Poleward translation of vortices due to deep thermal convection on a rotating planet
Published in Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics, 2020
An important question related to the dynamics of the abyssal layer and, via the dynamic topography effect, to the dynamics of the weather layer is whether the vortices generated by convection translate toward the poles like they do in more shallow weather layer. A hypothesis suggesting a mechanism different from the beta-drift was offered by Afanasyev and Zhang (2018). Convective parcels descending from the top of the atmosphere leave Taylor columns with cyclonic circulation behind them. The columns are aligned with the rotation axis of the planet and, as a consequence, when the parcels descend vertically the attached cyclones travel poleward. This effect is due to the sphericity of the planet where the rotation and gravity are misaligned (except at the poles). This hypothesis was tested in the author's laboratory experiments and accompanying numerical simulations (which modelled the laboratory tank). Misalignment of rotation and (effective) gravity was modelled using the effect of the excess centrifugal force acting on buoyant parcels. However, the question on whether this mechanism works in true spherical geometry remained open. In what follows we give a positive answer to this question based on the results of idealised numerical simulations of thermal convection in a polar region of a rotating planet. We show that a mechanism responsible for the translation of vortices is different from the beta-drift. The mechanism involves inertial waves which are essential for the creation of Taylor columns.