Experiments are described in which a radial temperature gradient is maintained along the lower horizontal boundary of a rotating annulus containing a thermally convecting fluid; the vertical side walls and upper horizontal boundary are nominally insulating. Comparison is made with the non-rotating experiments of Rossby (1965) and the same general asymmetric circulation is observed, i.e. that of a weakly stratified interior of slowly descending fluid occupying most of the annular gap, overlying a thin thermal layer of large vertical temperature gradients, stable over the cold part of the base and statically unstable over the warmer part; the circulation is completed by a narrow region of rising motion at the warm end of the base.A boundary-layer scaling analysis demonstrates the existence of six flow regimes, depending on the magnitude of a quantity Q defined such that Q is the square of the ratio of the (non-rotating) thermal-layer scale to the Ekman-layer scale. For small Q the flow is only weakly modified by rotation but as Q increases past unity rotation tends to thicken the thermal layer. Also presented are some numerical similarity solutions for the special case of a quadratic temperature distribution on the lower boundary and partially covering the range of Q achieved in the experiments, which is zero to ten. Above a certain critical value of Q (for the geometry used here Qc = 3·4) a baroclinic wave regime exists but is not examined in detail here although a brief discussion of an instability problem is given. Throughout comparisons are drawn between the experimental results and theoretical aspects of the problem.It is thought that the essential features of a system thermally driven in this way have their counterparts in natural systems such as the large-scale thermally induced ocean circulation driven by the latitudinal variation of incoming solar radiation.

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Experiments have been carried out to investigate the effect of rotation of the whole system on decaying turbulence, generally similar to grid turbulence, generated in air in an annular container on a rotating table. Measurements to determine the structure of the turbulence were made during its decay, mean quantities being determined by a mixture of time and ensemble averaging. Quantities measured (as functions of time after the turbulence generation) were turbulence intensities perpendicular to and parallel to the rotation axis, spectra of these two components with respect to a wavenumber perpendicular to the rotation axis, and some correlation coefficients, selected to detect differences in length scales perpendicular and parallel to the rotation axis. The intensity measurements were made for a wide range of rotation rates; the other measurements were made at a single rotation rate (selected to give a Rossby number varying during the decay from about 1 to small values) and, for comparison, at zero rotation. Subsidiary experiments were carried out to measure the spin-up time of the system, and to determine whether the turbulence produced any mean flow relative to the container.A principal result is that increasing the rotation rate produces faster decay of the turbulence; the nature of the additional energy sink is an important part of the interpretation. Other features of the results are as follows: the measurements with-outrotation can be satisfactorily related to wind-tunnel measurements; even with rotation, the ratio of the intensities in the two directions remains substantially constant; the normalized spectra for the rotating and the non-rotating cases show surprising similarity but do contain slight systematic differences, consistent with the length scales indicated by the correlations; rotation produces a large increase in the length scale parallel to the rotation axis and a smaller increase in that perpendicular to it; the turbulence produces no measurable mean flow.A model for the interpretation of the results is developed in terms of the action of inertial waves in carrying energy to the boundaries of the enclosure, where it is dissipated in viscous boundary layers. The model provides satisfactory explanations of the overall decay of the turbulence and of the decay of individual spectral components. Transfer of energy between wavenumbers plays a much less significant role in the dynamics of decay than in a non-rotating fluid. The relationship of the model to the interpretation of the length-scale difference in terms of the Taylor-Proudman theorem is discussed.The model implies that the overall dimensions of the system enter in an important way into the dynamics. This imposes a serious limitation on the application of the results to the geophysical situations at which experiments of this type are aimed.The paper includes some discussion of the possibility of energy transfer from the turbulence to a mean motion (the ‘vorticity expulsion’ hypothesis). It is possible, on the basis of the observations, to exclude this process as the additional turbulence energy sink. But this does not provide any evidence either for or against the hypothesis in the conditions for which it has been postulated.

Abetrsct. Detailed wind tunnel measurements have been made of mean flow and turbulence over a two-dimensional ridge and a circular hill, both having cosine-squared cross-section and maximum slope about 15". The measurements were made in an artificially thickened neutrally stratified boundary layer, and have been compared with results from linear models and rapid distortion theory as appropriate.Our study shows that linear theory gives generally good predictions of the mean flow on the upwind side of the hills, and especially of the flow speedup at the hill top, but that the turbulence is less well predicted. In particular, the measurements show a major increase in the vertical component of turbulence and in the shear stress on the upwind slope of both the two-and threedimensional hills which is not predicted by either equilibrium or isotropic rapid-distortion theories, although this may be partly due to the effect of streamline curvature. Rapid-distortion theory is successful only in describing the streamwise component of turbulence in the outer region of the flow, while in the upper part of the inner region of the flow, the turbulence measurements show disagreement with both the equilibrium and the rapid-distortion theories. Our experiments also confirm that the equilibrium region is a very thin layer close to the surface, while above this region and below the outer region, there is a transitional region where all terms in the stress equation are important.The measurements over the three-dimensional hill suggest that the mean flow and turbulence are broadly similar to those over the two-dimensional ridge, but with reduced perturbation amplitudes. The major differences between the two cases are found on the upwind slope and in the wake where, respectively, horizontal divergence and convergence of the three-dimensional flow are most pronounced.

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The atmospheric forcing of large sea-level oscillations (up to 1.5m amplitude with about a 10min period) in some bays and inlets of the Balearic Islands is described using simultaneous measurements of pressure and sea-level elevation in the port of Ciutadella (at the end of a large and narrow inlet) during 5-7 July 1989. The influence of atmospheric pressure oscillations on these large sea-level variations, locally known as 'rissaga', is investigated. Coherence and cross-correlation functions reveal that the large oscillations in the inlet are associated with and probably forced by a 10min gravity wave in the atmosphere. The effect of longer-period waves on the inlet is seen in the well-known inverted barometric effect, forcing small oscillations in the water level of just some centimetres. These latter waves have a period of around 50min and an unusually large amplitude of some 3 mb. The phase spectrum between sea level and pressure suggests that the inlet may behave as a damped harmonic oscillator which, during rissaga, is externally forced by the atmospheric pressure oscillations.

This paper describes an experimental and theoretical study of the complicated disturbance (Taylor column) due to the slow relative motion between a spherical, or short cylindrical, rigid object and an incompressible fluid of low viscosity in which the object is immersed, when the motion of the object is that of steady revolution with angular speed Ω rad/see about an axis (the Z-axis) whose perpendicular distance from the centre of the object,$\overline{R}$, is much greater than a typical linear dimension of the object,L, and the undisturbed fluid motion is one of steady rotation about the same axis with angular speed (Ω+Uϑ/R) and zero relative vorticity (i.e.d(UϑR)/dR= 0). It extends earlier experimental work on Taylor columns to systems of sufficiently large axial dimensions for Z variations in the disturbance pattern to be perceptible. Over the ranges of Rossby and Ekman numbers (based onL) covered by the experiments, namely ε = 1·89 × 10−3to 2·36 ×10−1and γ = 1·30 × 10−3to 2·03 × 10−2respectively, the axis of the Taylor column is found to trail in the downstream direction at a small angle ϕ = tan−1(Kε) to the line parallel to the Z-axis through the centre of the object, whereK= (1·54 ± 0·04) for a sphere. The variation with Z of the amplitude of the disturbance is roughly linear and the scale-length of this variation, Zc, is close toL/γ¼over the limited range of γ covered by the experiments.The experimental value ofKis remarkably close to the theoretical value derived by Prof. Lighthill in the appendix, where he applies his general linear theory of waves generated in a dispersive system by travelling forcing effects to the problem of describing a Taylor column at large distances from the moving object when the fluid is inviscid and unbounded.

The effect of turbulence on boundary-layer resistances to heat and water vapour transfer from leaves inclined to the mean airflow has.been studied using heated square plates in a wind tunnel. Heat and water vapour transfer coefficients increased with streamwise turbulence intensity for all angles of inclination of the plates to the mean flow, and the increase was dependent on the ratio of the longitudinal integral length scale to the plate dimension. This dependence on the turbulence length scale probably results from a resonant interaction between the boundary layer on the plate and the turbulence in the approaching mean flow.The paper also presents results of experiments with heated plates having serrated leading edges and/or a transverse ridge on the surface, conducted in an attempt to understand the aerodynamic importance of morphological irregularities on the leaf surface. The irregularities studied here disturbed the boundary layer on the plate, and greatly increased heat transfer when the angle of inclination of the plates to the mean wind was small, but had little effect when the angle of inclination exceeded 40".