Influence of topography on rotating convection

Simulations of oceanic convection in icy moons often consider the ice-ocean interface to be a perfectly smooth surface. We know from studies of sea ice and ice-ocean interfaces on Earth that this is quite far from reality. Recently, there has been a recent resurgence of research on the effects of topography on flows in a rotating frame. We perform simulations of rotating convection in a periodic box with a flat bottom. A sinusoidal topography is imposed on the top with a given wavelength and amplitude. We choose a rotation rate (Ekman number) and thermal driving (Rayleigh number) and examine the effect of the scale and amplitude of topography by quantifying the mean heat flux (or Nusselt number). We observe that as the scale of topography is changed to shorter wavelengths, the mean heat flux increases. We vary our parameters (Ekman and Rayleigh numbers) and quantify this increase across a few different parameters. Potential applications to icy moons are discussed.