What is it about?
Eddies in Jupiter's atmosphere are observed by their temperature signatures using NASA's powerful Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These observations yield an estimate of the deformation length, Ld, which is the shortest sustainable separation between highs and lows in an atmosphere or ocean, and is difficult to measure remotely. The size versus number of temperature eddies in Jupiter's troposphere indicates Ld is about 2100 km at 45 degrees latitude.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Studies like this help characterize the complicated processes that produce jet streams out of eddies (waves and turbulence).
Perspectives
Jupiter is quite close to Earth compared to the other gas giants, and it offers a relatively simple fluid system to study, because it has no mountains and no land-sea boundaries. The study of its dozens of jet streams has uncovered fundamental processes that are operating in all turbulent atmospheres and oceans, including on Earth.
Professor Timothy E. Dowling
University of Louisville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Jupiter's Tropospheric Thermal Emission. II. Power Spectrum Analysis and Wave Search, Icarus, November 1996, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1006/icar.1996.0188.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
