What is it about?
Jupiter has dozens of jet streams, but the one at 24 degrees North stands out as the fastest, blowing significantly faster than even the planet's superrotating equatorial jet. Regional atmospheric disturbances occasionally erupt on Jupiter, and one such event was observed to rattle the 24N jet. This article describes EPIC model simulations of this natural experiment, which helps reveal the hidden foundations of this fastest jet.
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Why is it important?
Jupiter contains more mass than all the other planets put together, and nearly all of this bulk is hidden beneath the cloud tops. Deep circulations have a profound effect on the observable jet streams, and this study reveals that the wind speed in the fastest jet actually gets even faster below the cloud tops, in order for simulations to match the jet's observed behavior when it is perturbed.
Perspectives
The results of this study match this author's results from analyses of Voyager vorticity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which revealed that Jupiter's eastward jets get significantly faster with depth. These observational and computer modeling studies both predate the Juno gravity results by many years, which have confirmed that Jupiter's jets run deep, about as deep as the jets are wide.
Professor Timothy E. Dowling
University of Louisville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Jupiter's 24° N highest speed jet: Vertical structure deduced from nonlinear simulations of a large-amplitude natural disturbance, Icarus, August 2005, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2005.02.012.
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