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At its root a large rotating cylinder about 0.6-0.7 meters in diameter and 0.25 meter tall, the acted as a representation of only one hemisphere. Towards the center of the tank, which one can envision "flattening" as a net against the hemispherical form of either the top of bottom half of the globe, a small bucket of ice was placed. The ice was contained in a metal cup with a low specific heat capacity, which then transferred the cooling effect through conduction to the water closest to the center. As such, a horizontal temperature gradient was instigated within the tank, thus allowing the periphery of the tank to become the relative warm "spot," with the fluid rising accordingly, while sinking towards the center of the tank. Between, as the warm fluid rose along the edges, it moved radially inwards, where it sank and expanded outwards towards the edges. 

One distinction between the tank experiment and the earth is that while the Coriolis parameter changes at each location of the earth (due to a constantly changing angle phi, or the angle equivalent to the earth's latitude), whereas it remains constant in the tank because the Coriolis parameter remains unchanged. Therefore, in order to simulate the change in regime from a Hadley cell-dominated means of heat transport to one tyrannized by rotating eddies, the rotation rate of the tank must be manually changed. At some threshold of rotation rate, the fluid will transition from being laminar in solid-body rotation to turbulent, resulting in changes in the means of heat transport. 

Atmospheric Data: Theory

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Atmospheric Data: Analysis

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