In this paper, natural convective flow within a rectangular enclosure has been investigated numerically. All the walls of the enclosure are adiabatic except the bottom wall, which is partially heated and cooled by sinusoidal temperature profile. Both situations: medium is hydro-dynamically isotropic and anisotropic are considered. The governing equations are written under assumption of Brinkman-extended non-Darcy model, including material derivative, and then solved by numerically using spectral element method (SEM). Main emphasize is given on effect of periodicity parameter (N) on local heat transfer rate (Nu(x)) as well as flow mechanism in the enclosure. The result shows that, as the periodicity is decreased on increasing N, the absolute value of Nu(x) at the bottom left corner point increases in both situations. For odd values of N. the local heat transfer profile is symmetric about the line X = 0.5. The entire flow is governed by two type convective cells: (i) rotating clockwise (ii) rotating anticlockwise. Furthermore, increasing of N increases the multiple cellular structures in the form of N + 1. The relative impact of media permeability on Nu(x) at (0,0) shows that enhancement of media permeability along Y-direction is much more effective than the same along X-direction. In contrast to isotropic porous media, the effect of the permeability and permeability orientation angle on the flow is complex and often non intuitive. In particular the present analysis shows that, different periodicity of temperature boundary condition has significant effect on the flow mechanism and consequently on the heat transfer rate for both situations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.