Courtesy of Andrea Malagoli Simulation of Convection . Simulation of Convective Penetration in Stellar Interiors . 3d movie of Convection . Sometimes a single physical process in nature can explain a variety of events.
Convection is one such process.
It functions because heated fluids, due to their lower density, rise and cooled fluids fall. A heated fluid will rise to the top of a column, radiate heat away and then fall to be re-heated, rise and so on. Gasses, like our atmosphere, are fluids, too. A packet of fluid can become trapped in this cycle. When it does, it becomes part of a convection cell.