🧪 2D Atmospheric Convection Model

This simulator models a slice of atmosphere as a real 2D grid of air parcels, each carrying its own temperature and pressure. Density is computed from the ideal gas law, ρ = P/(R·T), so warmer air is genuinely lighter and cooler air is genuinely denser at every grid cell, every frame — there is no scripted "rise" animation. Buoyancy accelerates each parcel vertically in proportion to how far its density departs from the reference density, producing real Rayleigh–Bénard-style convection cells above a heat source: air rises where it's warm, spreads out, cools, sinks elsewhere, and returns along the floor. Horizontal wind comes from the same governing physics: acceleration equals minus the local pressure gradient divided by density (−∇P/ρ), so air genuinely accelerates from high pressure toward low pressure, fastest where the pressure difference is steepest over the shortest distance — exactly the mechanism that drives real synoptic-scale winds. Click to place a ground heat source (simulating solar heating) or a low-pressure center (simulating a cyclone core), turn on Coriolis deflection to see straight inflow curl into a spiral, and watch the circulation patterns emerge purely from the simulated field equations advecting temperature and pressure across the grid.