Recorded 28 January 2025. Michael Calkins of the University of Colorado Boulder presents "Scaling laws and force balances in rotating convection: are they consistent?" at IPAM's Rotating Turbulence: Interplay and Separability of Bulk and Boundary Dynamics Workshop. Abstract: Predicting transport quantities in rotating convection typically means deriving a scaling law from dominant balances in the governing equations. Because rotating convection is characterized by a leading order geostrophic force balance, it is necessary to use higher order balances appearing in, for example, the vorticity equation. While these dominant balance arguments are appealing, it is less clear that they accurately describe the observed dynamics. I will discuss our efforts to make the connection between dominant balances in the equations and the observed scaling laws using data from direct numerical simulations in planar and spherical geometries, and the asymptotic model of rotating convection in the plane layer geometry. Learn more online at: https://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/workshops/rotating-turbulence-interplay-and-separability-of-bulk-and-boundary-dynamics/