Introduction

Convection in the most general terms refers to the movement of molecules within fluids (i.e. liquids, gases and rheids). Convection is one of the major modes of heat transfer and mass transfer. In fluids, convective heat and mass transfer take place through both diffusion the random Brownian motion of individual particles in the fluid and by advection, in which matter or heat is transported by the larger-scale motion of currents in the fluid. In the context of heat and mass transfer, the term "convection" is used to refer to the sum of advective and diffusive transfer.

What Causes Convection Currents

Imagine a cool room with a radiator at one end and no fans or any other forced air systems to blow the warm air to the other side of the room. How does the radiator heat the entire room? The key is convection currents. The hot radiator sets up convection currents that transfer thermal energy to the rest of the room and eventually heat the entire room. How do convection currents work? The hot radiator warms the air that is closest to the radiator. The warm air expands, becomes less dense and rises to the top of the room. When the air reaches the top of the room it is pushed sideways towards the far wall by the more recently warmed air rising from the radiator below. In this way warm air moves to the other side of the room. Once on the other side of the room the air drops down both because it has cooled a little and because the air behind it continues to push on it. The air then continues to circulate back to the radiator and repeat the process. By continuing to circulate, the convection current transfers heat energy to the other side of the room and heats the entire room. This process can work in any fluid, whether a liquid or a gas. Because matter must circulate for convection currents to transfer thermal energy convection currents can not work in a solid. However they can efficiently transfer heat in a fluid. When a fan or other mechanism circulates the fluid more rapidly, it is called forced convection. If the fluid circulation is not forced or helped in any way, it is called natural convection.

Convective heat transfer

A common use of the term convection leaves out the word "heat" but nevertheless refers to heat convection: that is, the case in which heat is the entity of interest being advected (carried), and diffused (dispersed). There are two major types of heat convection: 1. Heat is carried passively by a fluid motion which would occur anyway without the heating process. This heat transfer process is often termed forced convection or occasionally heat advection. 2. Heat itself causes the fluid motion (via expansion and buoyancy force), while at the same time also causing heat to be transported by this bulk motion of the fluid. This process is called natural convection, or free convection. With natural convection, heat transport (and related transport of other substances in the fluid due to it) is generally more complicated. Both forced and natural types of heat convection may occur together (in that case being termed mixed convection). Convective heat transfer is a mechanism of heat transfer occurring because of bulk motion (observable movement) of fluids (see convection for concept details). This can be contrasted with conductive heat transfer, which is the transfer of energy by vibrations at a molecular level through a solid or fluid, and radiative heat transfer, the transfer of energy through electromagnetic waves. As convection is dependent on the bulk movement of a fluid it can only occur in liquids, gases and multiphase mixtures. Convective heat transfer is split into two categories: natural (or free) convection and forced (or advective) convection, also known as heat advection.

Natural convection
Natural convective heat transfer

Papers lifted on rising convective air current from warm radiator When heat is transferred by the circulation of fluids due to buoyancy from the density changes induced by heating itself, then the process is known as natural convection or free convection. Familiar examples are the upward flow of air due to a fire or hot object and the circulation of water in a pot that is heated from below. For a visual experience of natural convection, a glass that is full of hot water filled with red food dye may be placed inside a fish tank with cold, clear water. The convection currents of the red liquid will be seen to rise and also fall, then eventually settle, illustrating the process as heat gradients are dissipated.

Onset of natural convection

Natural convection occurs when a system becomes unstable and therefore begins to mix by the movement of mass. A common observation of convection is of thermal convection in a pot of boiling water, in which the hot and less-dense water on the bottom layer moves upwards in plumes, and the cool and more dense water near the top of the pot likewise sinks. The onset of natural convection is determined by the Rayleigh number (Ra). This dimensionless number is given by

where

is the difference in density between the two parcels of material that are mixing g is the local gravitational acceleration L is the characteristic length-scale of convection: the depth of the boiling pot, for
example D is the diffusivity of the characteristic that is causing the convection, and is the dynamic viscosity. Natural convection will be more likely and/or more rapid with a greater variation in density between the two fluids, a larger acceleration due to gravity that drives the convection, and/or a larger distance through the convecting medium. Convection will be less likely and/or less rapid with more rapid diffusion (thereby diffusing away the gradient that is causing the convection) and/or a more viscous (sticky) fluid. For thermal convection due to heating from below, as described in the boiling pot above, the equation is modified for thermal expansion and thermal diffusivity. Density variations due to thermal expansion are given by:

= 0T
where

0 is the reference density, typically picked to be the average density of the medium, is the coefficient of thermal expansion, and T is the temperature difference across the medium.
The general diffusivity, D, is redefined as a thermal diffusivity, .

D=
Inserting these substitutions produces a Rayleigh number that can be used to predict thermal convection.

Forced Convection
Natural heat convection (also called "free convection") is distinguished from various types of forced heat convection, which refer to heat advection by a fluid which is not due to the natural forces of buoyancy induced by heating. In forced heat convection, transfer of heat is due to movement in the fluid which results from many other forces, such as (for example) a fan or pump. A convection oven thus works by forced convection, as a fan which rapidly circulates hot air forces heat into food faster than would naturally happen due to simple heating without the fan. Aerodynamic heating is a form of forced convection. Common fluid heat-radiator systems, and also heating and cooling of parts of the body by blood circulation, are other familiar examples of forced convection.

EFFECTS OF CONVECTIONAL CURRENTS

Flames and convection
In a zero-gravity environment, there can be no buoyancy forces, and thus no natural (free) convection possible, so flames in many circumstances without gravity, smother in their own waste gases. However, flames may be maintained with any type of forced convection (breeze); or (in high oxygen environments in "still" gas environments) entirely from the minimal forced convection that occurs as heat-induced expansion (not buoyancy) of gases allows for ventilation of the flame, as waste gases move outward and cool, and fresh highoxygen gas moves in to take up the low pressure zones created when flame-exhaust water condenses.

Buoyancy induced convection not due to heat

The general term for this is gravitational convection. Natural heat convection is only one form of gravitational heat convection. Differential buoyancy forces producing convection in gravity fields may result from non-heat sources of density variations such as variable composition. For example, gravitational convection can be seen in the diffusion of a source of dry salt downward into wet soil due to the buoyancy of fresh water in saline. Variable salinity in water and variable water content in air masses, are frequent causes of convection in the oceans and atmosphere, which do not involve heat, or else involve additional compositional density factors other than the density changes from thermal expansion (see thermohaline circulation). Similarly, variable composition within the Earth's interior which has not yet achieved maximal stability and minimal energy (in other words, with densest parts deepest) continues to cause a fraction of the convection of fluid rock and molten metal within the Earth's interior .

Convection occurs because the density of a fluid is related to its temperature. Hot rocks lower in the mantle are less dense than their cooler counterparts above. The hot rock rises and the cooler rock sinks due to gravity

Oceanic convection
Solar radiation also affects the oceans. Warm water from the Equator tends to circulate toward the poles, while cold polar water heads towards the Equator. Oceanic convection is also frequently driven by density differences due to varying salinity, known as thermohaline convection, and is of crucial importance in the global thermohaline circulation. In this case it is quite possible for relatively warm, saline water to sink, and colder, fresher water to rise, reversing the normal transport of heat.

Vibration convection in gravity fields

Vibration-induced convection occurs in powders and granulated materials in containers subject to vibration, in a gravity field. When the container accelerates upward, the bottom of the container pushes the entire contents upward. In contrast, when the container accelerates downward, the sides of the container push the adjacent material downward by friction, but the material more remote from the sides is less affected. The net result is a slow circulation of particles downward at the sides and upward in the middle.

If the container contains particles of different sizes, the downward-moving region at the sides is often narrower than the larger particles. Thus, larger particles tend to become sorted to the top of such a mixture.

Scale and rate of convection

Convection may happen in fluids at all scales larger than a few atoms. Convection occurs on a large scale in atmospheres, oceans, and planetary mantles. Current movement during convection may be invisibly slow, or it may be obvious and rapid, as in a hurricane. On astronomical scales, convection of gas and dust is thought to occur in the accretion disks of black holes, at speeds which may closely approach that of light.

EFFECT on CLIMATE
Convection currents happen when the sea is warmer than the lands, and so the hot air rising from the sea flows to the cold air over the land (as heat moves to cold) which forces the cold air to go up and fill the space the hot air has left. This works the other way round in the day as the land is hotter, and so the hot air form the land flows over to the cold air over the sea. A cool Breeze always flow at the surface of the land due to the convectional current. Covering some 71 per cent of the Earth and absorbing about twice as much of the sun's radiation as the atmosphere or the land surface, the oceans are a major component of the climate system. With their huge heat capacity, the oceans damp temperature fluctuations, but they play a more active and dynamic role as well. Ocean currents move vast amounts of heat across the planet - roughly the same amount as the atmosphere does. But in contrast to the atmosphere, the oceans are confined by land masses, so that their heat transport is more localised and channelled into specific regions. The present El Nio event in the Pacific Ocean is an impressive demonstration of how a change in regional ocean currents - in this case, the Humboldt current - can affect climatic conditions around the world. As I write, severe drought conditions are occurring in a number of Western Pacific countries. Catastrophic forest and bush fires have plagued several countries of South-East Asia for months, causing dangerous air pollution levels. Major floods have devastated parts of East Africa. A similar El Nio event in 1982/83 claimed nearly 2,000 lives and global losses of an estimated US$ 13 billion. Another region that feels the influence of ocean currents particularly strongly is the North Atlantic. It is at the receiving end of a circulation system linking the Antarctic with the Arctic, known as 'thermohaline circulation' or more picturesquely as 'Great Ocean Conveyor Belt' (Fig. 1). The Gulf Stream and its extension towards Scotland play an important part in this system. The term thermohaline circulation describes the driving forces: the temperature

(thermo) and salinity (haline) of sea water, which determine the water density differences which ultimately drive the flow. The term 'conveyor belt' describes its function quite well: an upper branch loaded with heat moves north, delivers the heat to the atmosphere, and then returns south at about 2-3 km below the sea surface as North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). The heat transported to the northern North Atlantic in this way is enormous: it measures around 1 PW, equivalent to the output of a million power stations. If we compare places in Europe with locations at similar latitudes on the North American continent, the effect becomes obvious. Bod in Norway has average temperatures of -2C in January and 14C in July; Nome, on the Pacific Coast of Alaska at the same latitude, has a much colder 15C in January and only 10C in July. And satellite images show how the warm current keeps much of the Greenland-Norwegian Sea free of ice even in winter, despite the rest of the Arctic Ocean, even much further south, being frozen. The reason for this amplification of the cooling was the advance of sea ice, which reflects sunlight back into space and thus led to further cooling. The air temperature changes in the model are roughly consistent with the observed difference between Bod and Nome, confirming that this difference is indeed mainly caused by the warmth brought north by the Atlantic ocean currents in the present climate.

Longitudinal circulation features

While the Hadley, Ferrel, and Polar cells are major players in global heat transport, they do not act alone. Disparities in temperature also drive a set of longitudinal circulation cells, and the overall atmospheric motion is known as the zonal overturning circulation. Latitudinal circulation is the consequence of the fact that incident solar radiation per unit area is highest at the heat equator, and decreases as the latitude increases, reaching its minimum at the poles. Longitudinal circulation, on the other hand, comes about because water has a higher specific heat capacity than land and thereby absorbs and releases more heat, but the temperature changes less than land. Even at mesoscales (a horizontal range of 5 to several hundred kilometres), this effect is noticeable; it is what brings the sea breeze, air cooled by the water, ashore in the day, and carries the land breeze, air cooled by contact with the ground, out to sea during the night.

On a larger scale, this effect ceases to be diurnal (daily), and instead is seasonal or even decadal in its effects. Warm air rises over the equatorial, continental, and western Pacific Ocean regions, flows eastward or westward, depending on its location, when it reaches the tropopause, and subsides in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and in the eastern Pacific. The Pacific Ocean cell plays a particularly important role in Earth's weather. This entirely ocean-based cell comes about as the result of a marked difference in the surface temperatures of the western and eastern Pacific. Under ordinary circumstances, the western Pacific waters are warm and the eastern waters are cool. The process begins when strong convective activity over equatorial East Asia and subsiding cool air off South America's west coast creates a wind pattern which pushes Pacific water westward and piles it up in the western Pacific. (Water levels in the western Pacific are about 60 cm higher than in the eastern Pacific, a difference due entirely to the force of moving air.)

The Hadley cell mechanism is well understood. The atmospheric circulation pattern that George Hadley described to provide an explanation for the trade winds matches observations very well. It is a closed circulation loop, which begins at the equator with warm, moist air lifted aloft in equatorial low pressure areas to the tropopause and carried poleward. At about 30N/S latitude, it descends in a high pressure area. Some of the descending air travels equatorially along the surface, closing the loop of the Hadley cell and creating the Trade Winds. Though the Hadley cell is described as lying on the equator, it should be noted that it is more accurate to describe it as following the suns zenith point, or what is termed the "thermal equator," which undergoes a semiannual north-south migration.

The Polar cell is likewise a simple system. Though cool and dry relative to equatorial air, air masses at the 60th parallel are still sufficiently warm and moist to undergo convection and drive a thermal loop. Air circulates within the troposphere, limited vertically by the tropopause at about 8 km. Warm air rises at lower latitudes and moves poleward through the upper troposphere at both the north and south poles. When the air reaches the polar areas, it has cooled considerably, and descends as a cold, dry high pressure area, moving away from the pole along the surface but twisting westward as a result of the Coriolis effect to produce the Polar easterlies. The outflow from the cell creates harmonic waves in the atmosphere known as Rossby waves. These ultra-long waves play an important role in determining the path of the jet stream, which travels within the transitional zone between the tropopause and the Ferrel cell. By acting as a heat sink, the Polar cell also balances the Hadley cell in the Earths energy equation. It can be argued that the Polar cell is the primary weathermaker for regions above the middle northern latitudes. While Canadians and Europeans may have to deal with

occasional heavy summer storms, there is nothing like a winter visit from a Siberian high to give one a true appreciation of real cold. In fact, it is the polar high which is responsible for generating the coldest temperature recorded on Earth: -89.2C at Vostok II Station in 1983 in Antarctica. The Hadley cell and the Polar cell are similar in that they are thermally direct; in other words, they exist as a direct consequence of surface temperatures; their thermal characteristics override the effects of weather in their domain. The sheer volume of energy the Hadley cell transports, and the depth of the heat sink that is the Polar cell, ensures that the effects of transient weather phenomena are not only not felt by the system as a whole, but except under unusual circumstances are not even permitted to form. The endless chain of passing highs and lows which is part of everyday life for mid-latitude dwellers is unknown above the 60th and below the 30th parallels. There are some notable exceptions to this rule. In Europe, unstable weather extends to at least 70 north. These atmospheric features are also stable, so even though they may strengthen or weaken regionally or over time, they do not vanish entirely.