What is it about?
The wind storms that cluster near the north and south poles of Jupiter are predominantly cyclones---low-pressure storms---but they do not look like the single, hurricane-like cyclone centered at each pole on Saturn. This article expands on a discovery by O'Neill et al. (2015, Nature Geosci. 8, 523-526) that one parameter in particular decides these polar configurations: the planetary Burger number. This parameter gives a precise measurement of the horizontal extent of an atmosphere. But, rather than measuring distance in terms of kilometers or miles, the Burger number employs a more natural unit, the atmosphere's deformation length: the smallest distance that can be maintained between highs and lows, before gravity erases such pressure differences.
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Why is it important?
Understanding the atmospheric dynamics of polar regions is important for climate studies on Earth and the planets. In addition, the results of this article can be turned around to estimate the deformation length of a planet's atmosphere, based simply on how storms are configured in the polar regions.
Perspectives
The modifications the lead author (Brueshaber) made to the EPIC atmospheric model to enable this study provide a good example of the advantages of open-source code. Note that the paper by O'Neill et al. (2015, Nature Geosci. 8, 523-526) should be cited for precedence regarding the importance of the parameter (Ld/a)^2 to the polar configuration.
Professor Timothy E. Dowling
University of Louisville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Dynamical regimes of giant planet polar vortices, Icarus, May 2019, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2019.02.001.
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