Multiple Zonal Jets in a Differentially Heated Rotating Annulus

Abstract

AbstractA laboratory experiment of multiple baroclinic zonal jets is described, thought to be dynamically similar to flow observed in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Differential heating sets the overall temperature difference and drives unstable baroclinic flow, but the circulation is free to determine its own structure and local stratification; experiments were run to a stationary state and extend the dynamical regime of previous experiments. A topographic analog to the planetary β effect is imposed by the gradient of fluid depth with radius supplied by a sloping bottom and a parabolic free surface. New regimes of a low thermal Rossby number (RoT ~ 10−3) and high Taylor number (Ta ~ 1011) are explored such that the deformation radius Lρ is much smaller than the annulus gap width L and similar to the Rhines length. Multiple jets emerge in rough proportion to the smallness of the Rhines scale, relatively insensitive to the Taylor number; a regime diagram taking the β effect into account better reflects the emergence of the jets. Eddy momentum fluxes are consistent with an active role in maintaining the jets, and jet development appears to follow the Vallis and Maltrud phenomenology of anisotropic wave–turbulence interaction on a β plane. Intermittency and episodes of coherent meridional jet migration occur, especially during spinup.