Advective Heat Transport and the Salt Chimney Effect: A Numerical Analysis

Figure 4

Panels (a) and (b) show fluid flow (a) and heat flow (b) vectors at the critical permeability (2.5 × 10⁻¹⁵ m²). The heat flow vectors begin to mirror the direction of fluid movement indicating a transition to advective heat transfer. Panels (c) and (d) show an identical model run when permeability is less than one order of magnitude higher; the fluid vectors and heat vectors mirror each other indicating advective heat transport is the dominant processes. Although we ran simulations out to 50 km, we only present the first 10 km of the model domain and focus our analysis here. Dark gray arrows denote general flow directions, while small black arrows are simulated mass (a, c) or heat (b, d) flux vectors (scaled by magnitude).