In this paper, a theoretical investigation has been carried out to study the combined effect of rotation speed modulation and internal heating on thermal instability in a temperature dependent viscous horizontal fluid layer. Rayleigh-Be´nard momentum equation with Coriolis term has been considered to describe the convective flow. The system is rotating about it is own axis with non-uniform rotational speed. In particular, a time-periodic and sinusoidally varying rotational speed has been considered. A weak nonlinear stability analysis is performed to find the effect of modulation on heat transport. Nusselt number is obtained in terms of amplitude of convection and internal Rayleigh number, and depicted graphically for showing the effects of various parameters of the system. The effect of modulated rotation speed is found to have a stabilizing effect for different values of modulation frequency. Further, internal heating and thermo-rheological parameters are found to destabilize the system. Ó 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Ain Shams University.