What is it about?
The belts that stripe Jupiter were discovered in 1630 and are associated with strong jet streams that encircle the planet, blowing eastward and westward with remarkably little deviation. This is quite unlike Earth, where there are just two jet streams per hemisphere, with each meandering in a wild fashion. Jupiter's jet streams are kept straight by deep jets that act like guide rails. Based on detailed analysis of Voyager wind data, this article for the first time describes the precise shape of these guide rails---the pressure ridges and troughs associated with the deep jets---and how they allow Jupiter's eastward and westward jets to run alongside each other without wavering.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Many problems in science and engineering involve fluids with winds or currents that blow in one direction at one location, and the opposite direction at an adjacent location. This is called alternating shear, and the situation is often unstable, leading to growing wavy patterns that can eventually destroy the original circulation. A handful of shear configurations are known to be stable, but intriguingly, Jupiter's jet streams strongly violate all these textbook stability conditions. This article describes the discovery of how Jupiter keeps its jet streams straight.
Perspectives
I consider this to be my most important article, because it led to a paradigm shift in the field of shear instability. The key discovery was made when I was a postdoc at Cornell in 1990, and this article was first submitted for publication that same year. It was reviewed and rejected, then rewritten for a second journal, reviewed and rejected from that journal, then submitted to a third journal, where it sat on the editor's desk in a pile of unopened manuscripts for 6 months. Finally, it was reviewed, revised, accepted, and published, in 1993, three years after its initial submission. Moral: paradigm shifting is a worthwhile process, just not a fast one.
Professor Timothy E. Dowling
University of Louisville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Relationship between Potential Vorticity and Zonal Wind on Jupiter, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, January 1993, American Meteorological Society,
DOI: 10.1175/1520-0469(1993)0502.0.co;2.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
