Abstract
The linear stability of convection in a rapidly rotating sphere studied here builds
on well established relationships between local and global theories appropriate to
the small Ekman number limit. Soward (1977) showed that a disturbance marginal
on local theory necessarily decays with time due to the process of phase mixing
(where the spatial gradient of the frequency is non-zero). By implication, the local
critical Rayleigh number is smaller than the true global value by an O(1) amount. The
complementary view that the local marginal mode cannot be embedded in a consistent
spatial WKBJ solution was expressed by Yano (1992). He explained that the criterion
for the onset of global instability is found by extending the solution onto the complex
s-plane, where s is the distance from the rotation axis, and locating the double turning
point at which phase mixing occurs. He implemented the global criterion on a related
two-parameter family of models, which includes the spherical convection problem for
particular O(1) values of his parameters. Since he used one of them as the basis of a
small-parameter expansion, his results are necessarily approximate for our problem. Here the asymptotic theory for the sphere is developed along lines parallel to Yano
and hinges on the construction of a dispersion relation. Whereas Yano's relation is
algebraic as a consequence of his approximations, ours is given by the solution of a
second-order ODE, in which the axial coordinate z is the independent variable. Our
main goal is the determination of the leading-order value of the critical Rayleigh
number together with its first-order correction for various values of the Prandtl
number. Numerical solutions of the relevant PDEs have also been found, for values of
the Ekman number down to 10−6; these are in good agreement with the
asymptotic theory. The results are also compared with those of Yano, which are
surprisingly good in view of their approximate nature.