Penguin Huddling: A Continuum Model

Abstract

Penguins huddling in a cold wind are represented by a two-dimensional, continuum model. The huddle boundary evolves due to heat loss to the huddle exterior and through the reorganisation of penguins as they seek to regulate their heat production within the huddle. These two heat transfer mechanisms, along with area, or penguin number, conservation, gives a free boundary problem whose dynamics depend on both the dynamics interior and exterior to the huddle. Assuming the huddle shape evolves slowly compared to the advective timescale of the exterior wind, the interior temperature is governed by a Poisson equation and the exterior temperature by the steady advection-diffusion equation. The exterior, advective wind velocity is the gradient of a harmonic, scalar field. The conformal invariance of the exterior governing equations is used to convert the system to a Polubarinova-Galin type equation, with forcing depending on both the interior and exterior temperature gradients at the huddle boundary. The interior Poisson equation is not conformally invariant, so the interior temperature gradient is found numerically using a combined adaptive Antoulas-Anderson and least squares algorithm. The results show that, irrespective of the starting shape, penguin huddles evolve into an egg-like steady shape. This shape is dependent on the wind strength, parameterised by the Péclet number Pe, and a parameter β which effectively measures the strength of the interior self-generation of heat by the penguins. The numerical method developed is applicable to a further five free boundary problems.