Know Your Planet

In this final project, we draw together some of the ideas explored in Projects 1, 2, and 3 and apply them to study, using atmospheric data and a rotating annulus, aspects of the general circulation of the atmosphere.

In this project we enquire into the nature of the convective process. We will simulate convection in the laboratory using a tank of water with a heating pad at its base and study convection in the atmosphere using thermodynamic diagrams.

In this project, we inspect fronts crossing the country associated with day-to-day variations in the weather using real-time atmospheric observations. In the laboratory we create fronts by allowing salty (and hence dense) columns of water to collapse under rotation and gravity. We discover that the observed changes in winds and temperature across our laboratory and atmospheric fronts is consistent with Margule’s formula (a discrete form of the thermal wind equation) and see that the dynamical balance at work in the atmosphere is the same as in the density fronts created in the rotating tank.

The purpose of this project is to study, using meteorological observations and laboratory experiments, the relation between the wind field and the mass field in a rotating system. In part I we explore the relationship in laboratory experiments; in part II atmospheric observations of intense cyclones and hurricanes are used.