Some laboratory experiments with a rotating, differentially heated fluid annulus

With a view to modelling more realistically certain large-scale meteorological and oceanographic flows, some experiments are described in which temperature and velocity fields are measured in a rotating, differentially heated fluid annulus, and their dependence upon the imposed boundary conditions is investigated. It is demonstrated that with suitable construction of the annulus walls the strength of the zonal baroclinic motion may be chosen independently of the basic density stratification. Most of the measurements described are for the symmetric flow regime. In the experiments it is found that certain aspects of the observed temperature and flow fields - in particular the basic stratification and the slope of the isotherms - agree reasonably well with theoretical estimates.