I’m very proud of this one. Check out our newest paper published in EOR in JAS below. The paper introduces two concepts. The first is whether or not convective clouds and circulations care about the Cosine terms of the Coriolis Force that we almost always forget about. The short answer is that they do. The Cosine terms systematically tilt convection toward the west. The implications of this are many (future papers), but in the simplest possible sense, clouds care because they are no longer symmetric at the equator. When viewed from space, Equatorial clouds are not round! The second is that this paper introduces our new (genuinely inter-disciplinary) conceptual model of convection: the Dynamics of Non-rotating Updraft Torii or “DoNUT” model (the name actually gives away that our development is incomplete so far). Rather than imagining convection as a plume, we envision convection as a 3D torus. Doing so allows us to draw some pretty fundamental insights into convection. We can connect rising and sinking air associated with convective clouds directly. And, you’ll see in the paper that connection matters. Here too, more papers to come.
I mention in the acknowledgements that my consideration of the Cosine Coriolis terms was inspired by several ATM 121A (atmospheric dynamics) classes I have taught recently. This paper would not exist if I hadn’t had some great students in my classes over the years. We also acknowledge a colleague whose recent passing inspired us to keep pushing (cooking?) the DoNUT.
