The large structures occurring in the fluid flow on the Sun's surface, in the atmosphere and oceans of planets, including our Earth, are primarily driven by convection. The  actual shape but also the efficiencies of the heat transport are, however, significantly influenced by the Coriolis force due to rotation. Crystal growth and the ventilation of buildings and aircraft originate within the same physical framework. Understanding these fundamental processes is thus not only utterly important for geo- and astrophysics, but also in industry.

To get insight into this intriguing subject, we perform high-resolved Direct Numerical Simulations of Rayleigh-Bénard convection, where we take various rotation rates into account, ranging from a weak background rotation to strong rotation. Additionally, we also consider the impact of temperature-dependent  material properties.

Instantaneous temperature isosurfaces in rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection of water under Oberbeck-Boussinesq (left) and non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (right) conditions.