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Circulation in the Southern Ocean is a key component of the global climate system as it controls the exchange of water masses between the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, thereby modulating heat and carbon uptake and biological activity. In the Southern Ocean, surface winds and buoyancy produce a circulation characterised by processes spanning a wide range of length and time scales, from large-scale overturning and zonal flow to small-scale turbulence and convection. A major source of uncertainty in numerical studies of the Southern Ocean lies in their characterisation of convection. Convection, an advective process triggered by a destabilising buoyancy gradient, can manifest over a small area (for instance, as open-ocean convection) or broad region (such as along the Antarctic coast). Convection in the ocean is a turbulent process, and is not resolved by large-scale ocean models.