What is it about?
Jupiter's stripes---its belts and zones---serve as highways for the hundreds of swirling storms on the planet. This study examines the storm "traffic" in Jupiter's busiest highway, which runs across the middle of its southern hemisphere.
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Why is it important?
Merging of smaller storms to make bigger ones is a common occurrence on Jupiter, however there are processes that can interfere with merging. Often, a low-pressure storm, a cyclone, is observed to be sandwiched between two high-pressure storms, or anticyclones, and appears to keep them apart. Occasionally, the intervening cyclone is ejected and the two anticyclones proceed to merge. This study using EPIC modeling to determine the environmental conditions that control this traffic flow.
Perspectives
This is an example of an atmospheric modeling paper that examines a three-body problem, in this case two anticyclones with a cyclone between them.
Professor Timothy E. Dowling
University of Louisville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Jupiter’s South South Temperate Zone vortices: Observations and simulations, Icarus, April 2010, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2009.10.002.
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