According to Space.com, a recent study has discovered that the colossal swirling storms surrounding Jupiter’s poles are sustained by a process similar to the one leading to the formation of oceanic whirlpools on Earth.
Surface of planet Jupiter. Image: NASA
The gigantic storms on Jupiter, spanning up to 1,000 km, were first discovered by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in 2016. Since then, scientists have speculated that these storms are driven by convection—a process known on Earth. However, until now, they have been unable to prove the existence of this process on Jupiter.
Lia Siegelman, an oceanographer and postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, noticed the resemblance between these storms and oceanic whirlpools studied on our planet. “When I saw the complexity of the swirling motion around the storms of Jupiter, it reminded me of the chaos you see looking at the swirling water around oceanic eddies,” said Lia Siegelman.
Siegelman and her colleagues analyzed a series of images of the storms around Jupiter’s North Pole, captured using infrared wavelengths, which reveal the heat emitted by an object. They used a similar method employed by scientists to study large-scale air and water currents in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.
The analysis enabled the scientific team to calculate the direction and speed of the winds, as well as track the motion of the clouds. They were able to identify areas with thin cloud cover, allowing them to peer deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as regions obscured by thick fog.
Illustration of the Juno spacecraft orbiting planet Jupiter. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The analysis demonstrated that rising hot air transports energy in the atmosphere and “fuels” the clouds until they develop into large-scale storms, similar to the observed storms around the poles.
Siegelman mentioned that just as the study of Earth’s oceans helps unveil mysteries about Jupiter’s atmosphere, these new findings could shed light on large-scale processes on Earth. For example, the physical mechanisms at work on Jupiter could reveal energy exchange pathways that may also exist on Earth but have yet to be identified by scientists.
Juno, being the first spacecraft to capture images of Jupiter’s poles, as previous probes had explored the giant planet by orbiting along its equator. The spacecraft has discovered eight storms around the planet’s North Pole and five storms in the South, all of which persist over five years after their initial detection.
The research was published on January 10 in the journal Nature Physics.