Simulations of buoyant flows driven by variations in solar radiation beneath ice cover

Solar radiation is known to drive vertical motion under ice-covered lakes in the late winter. Numerical studies in this context tend to neglect the effects of nonuniform solar radiation on fluid motion in the lake interior. This research provides direct numerical simulations and the subsequent analysis of the resulting gravity-current-like flow, which propagates into an inversely stratified ambient with developing convection in the form of three-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. We find that with the chosen parameters, typical of an ice-covered lake, geometry plays a much larger role in its development and cessation.