Speaker: Cy David
Affiliation: EPSS, UCLA
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM
Abstract
Large-scale flows in gas giant atmospheres, icy moon subsurface oceans, and liquid planetary cores control the transport of heat and chemical species, as well as the generation of magnetic fields in electrically conducting fluid regions. Understanding these fluid systems fundamentally depends on our ability to predict the variety of dynamical length scales that arise from the interplay of rotation, buoyancy, and planetary curvature. These ingredients are simulated in UCLA’s Coreaboloid, a rotating convection device equipped with an infrared (IR) camera aimed axially downwards at the free surface of the fluid. IR-derived surface temperature fields function much like the clouds in Jupiter’s weather layer, revealing the multi-scale dynamics of the rapidly-rotating flow. The small scales in the temperature field are dominated by eddies generated through rotating convection and baroclinic instabilities. Kinetic energy injected through these processes feed into east-west Jovian-like jets, which saturate at large scales set by friction. This alternating pattern of zonal flows influences the transport of heat, producing bands of matching width in the temperature field, reminiscent of Jupiter’s stripes. Complemented by particle image velocimetry, the IR-derived temperature data provide the first match between observed and predicted convective, baroclinic, and jet length-scales coexisting in laboratory experiments of rotating convection with multiple coherent jets.