Pierrehumbert Raymond T.

No Thumbnail Available
Last Name
Pierrehumbert
First Name
Raymond T.
ORCID

Filters

2003 - 2004 2
1 1
2
Reset filters

Settings

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Article
    Hydrothermal plume dynamics on Europa : implications for chaos formation
    (American Geophysical Union, 2004-03-20) Goodman, Jason C. ; Collins, Geoffrey C. ; Marshall, John C. ; Pierrehumbert, Raymond T.
    Hydrothermal plumes may be responsible for transmitting radiogenic or tidally generated heat from Europa's rocky interior through a liquid ocean to the base of its ice shell. This process has been implicated in the formation of chaos regions and lenticulae by melting or exciting convection in the ice layer. In contrast to earlier work, we argue that Europa's ocean should be treated as an unstratified fluid. We have adapted and expanded upon existing work describing buoyant plumes in a rotating, unstratified environment. We discuss the scaling laws governing the flow and geometry of plumes on Europa and perform a laboratory experiment to obtain scaling constants and to visualize plume behavior in a Europa-like parameter regime. We predict that hydrothermal plumes on Europa are of a lateral scale (at least 25–50 km) comparable to large chaos regions; they are too broad to be responsible for the formation of individual lenticulae. Plume heat fluxes (0.1–10 W/m2) are too weak to allow complete melt-through of the ice layer. Current speeds in the plume (3–8 mm/s) are much slower than indicated by previous studies. The observed movement of ice blocks in the Conamara Chaos region is unlikely to be driven by such weak flow.
  • Technical Report
    Conceptual models of the climate : 2001 program of studies in geophysical fluid dynamics
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2003) Balmforth, Neil J. ; Tziperman, Eli ; Cessi, Paola ; Pierrehumbert, Raymond T.
    In 2001, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer Study Program grappled with Conceptual Models of the Climate. Eli Tziperman (Weizman Institute), Paola Cessi (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and Ray Pierre- Humbert (University of Chicago) provided the principal lectures. This introduction gave us all a glimpse into the complex problem of the climate, both in the present, past and future, and even on other planets. As always, the next weeks of the program were filled with many seminars from the visitors, and culminated in the fellow's reports.