Heat transport scaling theory for rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection

Thermally-induced buoyancy and rotation govern convection in many geophysical and astrophysical systems. The paradigm system with which to study such phenomena is rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection, where the strength of buoyancy is reflected in the Rayleigh number Ra and that of the Coriolis force in the Ekman number Ek. How the heat transport, measured by the Nusselt number Nu, depends on Ra and Ek, and how this dependence changes in the buoyancy- or rotation-dominated regimes, remain important questions and have been the subject of many years of debate. In Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 55 (2023) [1] we suggest a unifying heat transport scaling model, which relates the scaling exponents in these two regimes. The larger exponent in the buoyancy-dominated regime is related to a larger exponent in the rotation-dominated regime, and we find the limiting values of these exponents. The theoretical results are well supported by measurements and direct numerical simulations.