2022/08/19 by Jason Olsthoorn, Olsthoorn, Jason
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2208.09471
openalex publication_date 2022/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection is often modelled with a constant surface temperature. However, the surface temperature of many geophysical systems, such as lakes, is coupled to the atmospheric forcing. In this paper, we account for this dynamic surface temperature through an additional parameter β. Using an appropriately defined dynamical Rayleigh number \RaD, we recover many of the results from the standard Rayleigh-Bénard model. We hope that this work will simplify the application of Rayleigh-Bénard theory in geophysical contexts, such as lakes.