The physics of thermomechanical coupling of the continental lithosphere and its surrounding mantle is studied using a simple hydrodynamic model in which a fluid is heated from below and is bounded by rigid side walls. Rayleigh numbers up to 10 are considered. A series of finite-element stability analyses is employed to characterize systematically the nature of convective instability in such a s...

We study a 2-phase free boundary problem for harmonic measure first considered by Kenig and Toro [KT06] and prove a sharp Hölder regularity result. The central difficulty is that there is no a priori non-degeneracy in the free boundary condition. Thus we must establish non-degeneracy by means of monotonicity formulae.

Tropical Storm Edouard (2002) experienced episodic outbreaks of convection downshear within the storm core in the presence of 11–15 m s of ambient vertical wind shear. These outbreaks lasted 2–6 h and were followed by long periods with no deep convection. Flights fromU.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft within the boundary layer were used to investigate the cause of one such oscillation. Low ...

Dual-wavelength lidar measurements with the small lidar system POLIS of the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München were performed during the SALTRACE experiment at Barbados in June and July 2013. Based on high-accuracy measurements of the linear depolarization ratio down to about 200 m above ground level, the dust volume fraction and the dust mass concentration within the convective marine bound...

In dilute astrophysical plasmas, thermal conduction is primarily along magnetic field lines, and therefore highly anisotropic. As a result, the usual convective stability criterion is modified from a condition on entropy to a condition on temperature. For small magnetic fields or small wavenumbers, instability occurs in any atmosphere where the temperature and pressure gradients point in the sa...

The modeling of the atmospheric boundary layer during convective conditions has long been a major source of uncertainty in the numerical modeling of meteorological conditions and air quality. Much of the difficulty stems from the large range of turbulent scales that are effective in the convective boundary layer (CBL). Both small-scale turbulence that is subgrid in most mesoscale grid models an...

We study initial boundary value problems for the convective Cahn-Hilliard equation ∂tu+ ∂ 4 xu+ u∂xu+ ∂ 2 x(|u| u) = 0. It is well-known that without the convective term, the solutions of this equation may blow up in finite time for any p > 0. In contrast to that, we show that the presence of the convective term u∂xu in the Cahn-Hilliard equation prevents blow up at least for 0 < p < 4 9 . We a...

The mechanism that causes an interdecadal oscillation in a coarse resolution sector ocean model forced by mixed boundary conditions is studied. The oscillation is characterized by large fluctuations in convective activity and air/sea heat exchange on a decadal time scale. When the convective activity is large, a strengthening of the southeastward surface flow advects more relatively fresh water...

This study attempts to understand interactions between midlatitude convective systems and their environments through a heat and moisture budget analysis using the sounding data collected from the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) in central Oklahoma. Distinct large-scale structures and diabatic heating and drying profiles are presented for cases of weaker and elevated ...