What is it about?
Prior to the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts, this article anticipates they will produce observable buoyancy waves or "gravity" waves, whose speed depends on the effective thickness of the troposphere, which is an important but poorly known parameter. Dry air on Jupiter is hydrogen and helium, and consequently is much lighter than water vapor (in contrast, dry air on Earth is actually heavier than water vapor). This means that water clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere are relatively heavy, and this article shows that how thick or thin these water clouds are affects the speed of the expected comet-impact waves.
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Why is it important?
Jupiter's water clouds are hidden below its ammonia cloud tops, and in general water has proven to be difficult to detect on Jupiter by remote sensing, even though any water would be a major driver of Jupiter's weather, just like on Earth. Prior to the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts, this article shows how water affects Jupiter's atmospheric waveguide, in anticipation of this waveguide being put into action by the impacts.
Perspectives
Scientists met at a Comet Pre-Crash Bash workshop to compare notes before the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts. At that workshop, I showed a preliminary EPIC model comet-wave simulation that generated interest in the idea that such waves could provide new information about Jupiter's troposphere. This story was reported as a research news article in Science: "Jupiter Hits May Be Palpable After All" (1993, doi: 10.1126/science.262.5133.505).
Professor Timothy E. Dowling
University of Louisville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Atmospheric gravity waves from the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter, Geophysical Research Letters, June 1994, American Geophysical Union (AGU),
DOI: 10.1029/94gl01057.
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