Numerical Study of Heat Transport by Internal Gravity Waves above a Growing Unstable Layer

Abstract

A stable layer of fluid which is suddenly heated at the bottom is studied numerically in two dimensions. Internal waves are soon set in motion by penetrative convection elements, and are found to transport heat downward, on the average, even at heights well above the interface separating the stable and convective layers. This heat transport is found to be associated primarily with a finite‐amplitude effect, to a lesser extent with the increase of internal wave amplitudes with time, and only slightly associated with processes of molecular diffusion.