Connecting wall modes and boundary zonal flows in rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Rotating thermal convection captures key properties of geophysical and astrophysical systems. By performing high-resolution direct numerical simulations we strongly connect the physics wall-localized states rotating with observations a boundary zonal flow where turbulent has strong localized structure similar properties. We show that as buoyancy increases at fixed rotation rate, spatial, temporal, heat-transport state change smoothly monotonically. Our results in finite containers geophysical/astrophysical phenomena much larger spatial scales.