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SUMMARY:Baroclinic Adjustment Revisited: in Atmospheric and Laboratory Mod
 els of Rotating Stratified Flows - Prof Peter Read (University of Oxford)
DTSTART:20190517T120000Z
DTEND:20190517T130000Z
UID:TALK123193@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Amélie Lamarquette
DESCRIPTION:It is 40 years now since the publication of a pioneering study
  by Peter Stone that proposed the hypothesis that baroclinic instabilities
  act to hold the Earth’s atmosphere close to a marginally unstable state
  as a form of self-organized criticality\, thereby exerting control over t
 he heat transport and thermal structure of the extratropical atmosphere. T
 his is in contrast to the tropics\, where the vertical lapse rate seems to
  be largely determined by (moist) convective adjustment. More recent studi
 es\, however\, have questioned this approach\, raising alternative impacts
  of equilibrating baroclinic eddies on nonlinear macroturbulent cascades a
 nd atmospheric stability\, and the whole question of what determines the t
 hermal structure of the mid-latitude atmosphere remains inadequately under
 stood.\n\nIn this talk I will outline some ongoing new work in which we ar
 e attempting to address these issues (a) using laboratory experiments on r
 otating\, stratified flows that combine regions of free convection with ba
 roclinic instability\, and (b) using highly simplified atmospheric circula
 tion models with widely differing rotation rates. The results help to quan
 tify some of the effects of both baroclinic and convective adjustment effe
 cts on large-scale circulation across wide ranges of parameter space\, eve
 n without moist convection\, indicating that baroclinic adjustment effects
  are particularly strong for Earth- and Mars-like planets. The implication
 s for various planetary atmospheres will be discussed. 
LOCATION:JDB Seminar Room\, CUED
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