The forced flow of a rotating viscous liquid which is heated from below

Abstract

A liquid is contained in a cylindrical vessel and is subject to heating on the horizontal base of the vessel. The problem of the forced flow arising from the heating has been investigated in the case when the heating function is symmetrically arranged about the central axis. It is found that the relative forced flow tends to become zonal in character when the vessel rotates at a sufficiently high angular velocity. This relative zonal motion is principally in the direction of the rotation except near the outer portion of the fluid where it is in the opposite direction, the former being ‘westerlies’, the latter ‘easterlies’. The easterlies are due to the non-linear inertia terms in the equations of motion. This description of the velocity field is used because the experiment described above has considerable meteorological significance.