That’s basically what’s happening at the Great Red Spot. That turbulence could produce gravity waves (which aren’t the same thing as the gravitational waves produced by black hole collisions and the like – gravity waves form when fluids meet and gravity tries to restore equilibrium between them, like when the wind meets the ocean and creates a wave or tsunami) that carry energy up into the atmosphere. They combine to heat the atmosphere 800 kilometres above the storm. New research shows that the high temperatures in Jupiter’s atmosphere are driven by the Great Red Spot on the planet’s surface.
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Despite orbiting five times the distance from the Sun as Earth, the temperatures in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere are quite comparable to our planet’s.
But for low to mid-latitudes, auroral heating and solar heating from above are not viable options so the researchers chose to look for energy sources below.
“We didn’t think those two regions could be coupled in any significant way, but it turns out they are”, said lead researcher James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientists at Boston University.
So, using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility, astronomers observed Jupiter for nine hours, looking for these flows as thermal fluctuations in the planet’s upper atmosphere.
“We could see nearly immediately that our maximum temperatures at high altitudes were above the Great Red Spot far below – a weird coincidence, or a major clue?” said Dr James O’Donoghue, a member of the team from Boston University in the US.
Using data from the SpeX instrument, the researchers could look at non-visible infrared light hundreds of miles above Jupiter’s cloud tops. Bright regions at the poles result from auroral emissions; the contrast at low- and mid-latitudes has been enhanced for visibility.
That’s the conclusion of scientists who found a striking hotspot right above the Great Red Spot.
You could toss three Earths inside Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and there would still be a little room. Discovered within years of Galileo’s introduction of telescopic astronomy in the 17th century, its swirling pattern of colourful gases is often called a “perpetual hurricane”.
Inside the spot, the winds rise up to 650 km/hour (about 400 mph) and take six days to complete a spin. The planet completes one revolution in ten hours, considered a quick pace.
And help us understand the structure of the Great Red Spot and the colorful cloud bands crisscrossing Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The study team noted that the abnormally high-temperature ranges associated with the GRS aren’t exclusive to Jupiter. The dilemma also occurs at Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and probably for all giant exoplanets outside our solar system.
“Energy transfer to the upper atmosphere from below has been simulated for planetary atmos-pheres, but not yet backed up by observations”, O’Donoghue said.
Data was collected by observing the gas giant using the SpeX spectrometer on NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility for nine hours – nearly a complete Jovian day.
They published their work in Nature. Juno just arrived at the gas giant earlier this month. “We are very excited about the new science that these missions will bring”.
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How is the Great Red Spot heating the planet’s upper atmosphere? Some theorists thought this auroral heating could flow toward the equator to warm the planet’s mid-latitudes.
