Atmospheric Heat Engine Simulator

3D THERMODYNAMIC DYNAMICS
Temperature / Buoyancy Gradient
240 K 300 K

How the source heat-engine and circulation fixtures respond

Read the explanation

A heat engine operating between hot and cold temperatures has a mathematical Carnot ceiling. The source expresses it as one minus cold temperature divided by hot temperature, times one hundred percent. Temperatures are absolute kelvin. Hold the equator at three hundred kelvin and begin with the polar value two hundred ten kelvin. The ceiling is thirty percent. Raise the polar temperature toward two hundred eighty kelvin. The cyan point falls along the source relation to about six point six seven percent. A smaller hot to cold difference gives a smaller theoretical ceiling in this comparison. The horizontal axis uses cold temperature in kelvin and the vertical axis uses percent. This ceiling does not measure actual atmospheric conversion efficiency. The source scales a supplied heat input fixture by this fraction to display power. Its animated hemisphere is a teaching representation, not a solved global weather engine. The source jet speed is a scaled fixture: forty two point five meters per second times temperature difference divided by sixty kelvin, divided by rotation multiplier. Keep the equator to pole difference at sixty kelvin. Start with rotation multiplier zero point two. The model speed is two hundred twelve point five meters per second. Increase the dimensionless rotation multiplier toward two. The yellow point follows an inverse curve down to twenty one point two five meters per second. At multiplier one it is forty two point five. The axes explicitly use the multiplier and meters per second. These values follow the exact source scaling rule. They do not independently solve thermal wind balance, calibrate an observed jet, or predict a storm. Changing this multiplier also changes the source wave number fixture, which we examine next. The source wave number rule uses four point two times the square root of rotation multiplier divided by jet speed normalized to forty two point five meters per second. It then clips the result to a range from two to eight. Keep temperature difference at sixty kelvin and begin at multiplier zero point two. The displayed fixture is held at two. Increase the multiplier toward two. The cyan point first follows the lower clipping plateau, then rises through four point two at multiplier one, and finally reaches the upper plateau at eight. Because the jet fixture decreases as one over multiplier, the unclipped wave number is four point two times the multiplier in this fixed comparison. The plateaus come from explicit source clamps. They are not measured physical saturation. This is a dimensionless teaching wave number, not a solved dispersion relation or a forecast of actual Rossby patterns. The original particle animation and layer toggles remain separate illustrations.

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