An experimental study of multiple zonal jet formation in rotating, thermally driven convective flows on a topographic beta-plane

A series of rotating, thermal convection experiments were carried out on the Coriolis platform in Grenoble, France, to investigate the formation and energetics of systems of zonal jets through nonlinear eddy/wave-zonal flow interactions on a topographic β-plane. The latter was produced by a combination of a rigid, conically sloping bottom and the rotational deformation of the free upper surface. Convection was driven by a system of electrical heaters laid under the (thermally conducting) sloping bottom and led to the production of intense, convective vortices. These were observed to grow in size as each experiment proceeded and led to the development of weak but clear azimuthal jet-like flows, with a radial scale that varied according to the rotation speed of the platform. Detailed analyses reveal that the kinetic energy-weighted radial wavenumber of the zonal jets, kJy, scales quite closely either with the Rhines wavenumber as kJy ≃ 2(βT/2urms)1/2, where urms is the rms total or eddy velocity and βT is t...