[IGPP Everyone] Special Seminar: Monday 12noon Geology 3814

[Jonathan Aurnou]

This Monday, Daniel Lecoanet (UC Berkeley, Dept. Physics) will give a seminar entitled “Convective Excitation of Internal Waves”.  

Location: 3814 Geology Bldg.

Time: 12noon, 10/26/15.

Abstract:
New results suggest the upper part of the Earth's liquid core is stably stratified. Convection near a stably stratified region can excite internal waves.  This also occurs in the Earth's atmosphere, some gas giants like Saturn, and most stars including the sun.  We will present a joint experimental & computational study of internal wave generation by convection.  We describe an experiment using the peculiar property of water that its density maximum is at 4C.  A tank of water cooled from below and heated from above develops a cold, convective layer near 4C at the bottom of the tank, adjacent to a hot stably stratified layer at the top of the tank.  We simulate this setup in 2D using the open-source Dedalus code (dedalus-project.org).  Our simulations show that waves are excited from within the convection zone, opposed to at the interface between the convective and stably stratified regions.  Finally, we will discuss new 3D simulations probing the energy spectrum of convectively excited internal waves.

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Jonathan Aurnou
UCLA Earth & Space Sciences
spinlab.ess.ucla.edu
youtube.com/user/spinlabucla