Penetrative Convection in Partly Stratified Rapidly Rotating Spherical Shells

• Main Authors: Wieland Dietrich, Johannes Wicht
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-11-01
• Series: Frontiers in Earth Science
• Subjects: stable stratification; rapidly rotating spherical shells; penetrative convection; numerical simulation; scaling laws
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2018.00189/full

Many celestial objects are thought to host interfaces between convective and stable stratified interior regions. The interaction between both, e.g., the transfer of heat, mass, or angular momentum depends on whether and how flows penetrate into the stable layer. Powered from the unstable, convective regions, radial flows can pierce into the stable region depending on their inertia (overshooting). In rapidly rotating systems, the dynamics are strongly influenced by the Coriolis force and radial flows penetrate in stratified regions due to the geostrophic invariance of columnar convection even in the limit of vanishing inertia. Within this study, we numerically investigate both mechanisms and hence explore the nature of penetrative convection in rapidly rotating spherical shells. The study covers a broad range of system parameters, such as the strength of the stratification relative to the Coriolis force or the inertia. Guided by the application to Saturn, we model a sandwiched stable stratified layer (SSL) surrounded by two convective zones. A comprehensive analysis of the damping behavior of convective flows at the edges of the SSL showed that the mean penetration depth is controlled by the ratio of stratified and unstratified buoyancy gradients and is hence independent of rotation. A scaling law is derived and suggests that the penetration depth decreases with the square root of the ratio of unstabilizing and stabilizing entropy gradients. The influence of the Coriolis force, however, is evident by a modulation of the penetration depth along latitude, since convective columns are elongated vertically and hence pierce predominantly into the SSL around mid-latitudes and outside the tangent cylinder. Our result also show that the penetration depth decreases linearly with the flow length scale (low pass filter), confirming predictions from the linear theory of rotating partially stratified convection.