Penetrative Convection in Rotating Tilted f-plane with Multiple Radiative and Convective Layers

Abstract

In this paper, we conducted a linear instability analysis to investigate penetrative convection in rotating, tilted f-planes with multiple convectively stable and unstable layers. Our findings indicate that penetrative distance decreases with increasing rotational and stratification strengths. We also observed that teleconvection, multiroll convection, and cutoff convection, previously identified in two-layer models, are present in multilayer models. For a three-layer model, the flow exhibits an up-down symmetric pattern for penetrative convection at the poles. However, this symmetry is disrupted in tilted f-planes when the flow drifts in equatorward or poleward directions. At mid- to low latitudes, poleward flow tends to enhance penetration in the upper layers, while equatorward flow facilitates penetration in the lower layers. The disruption of up-down symmetry is also observed in multilayer models with more layers when oscillatory convection occurs. Our findings suggest that upward and downward penetration could be significantly different in stars or planets with multilayer structures. However, under a strong stable composition gradient, the instability is found to be reduced.