Remote determination of the shape of Jupiter's vortices from laboratory experiments

Abstract

Jupiter's dynamics shapes its cloud patterns but remains largely unknown below this natural observational barrier. Unraveling the underlying three-dimensional flows is thus a primary goal for NASA's ongoing Juno mission that was launched in 2011. Here, we address the dynamics of large Jovian vortices using laboratory experiments complemented by theoretical and numerical analyses. We determine the generic force balance responsible for their three-dimensional pancake-like shape. From this, we define scaling laws for their horizontal and vertical aspect ratios as a function of the ambient rotation, stratification and zonal wind velocity. For the Great Red Spot in particular, our predicted horizontal dimensions agree well with measurements at the cloud level since the Voyager mission in 1979. We additionally predict the Great Red Spot's thickness, inaccessible to direct observation: it has surprisingly remained constant despite the observed horizontal shrinking. Our results now await comparison with upcoming Juno observations.

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• New models of Jupiter in the context of Juno and Galileo
• Velocity and Vorticity Measurements of Jupiter's Great Red Spot Using Automated Cloud Feature Tracking
• On the interaction of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and zonal jet streams
• Determining the depth of Jupiter's Great Red Spot with Juno: a Slepian approach
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• The number and location of Jupiter's circumpolar cyclones explained by vorticity dynamics