Investigating Barotropic Zonal Flow in Jupiter's Deep Atmosphere using Juno Gravitational Data

Abstract

The high-precision Juno gravitational measurements allow us to infer the structure of Jupiter's deep atmospheric zonal flow. Since this inference is nonunique, it is important to explore the space of possible solutions. In this paper, we consider a model in which Jupiter's deep atmospheric zonal flow is barotropic, or invariant along the direction of the rotation axis, until it is truncated at depth by some dynamical process (e.g., Reynolds stress, Lorentz or viscous force). We calculate the density perturbation produced by the $z$-invariant part of the flow using the thermal wind equation and compare the associated odd zonal gravitational harmonics ($J_3$, $J_5$, $J_7$, $J_9$) to the Juno-derived values. Most of the antisymmetric gravitational signal measured by Juno can be explained by extending observed winds between $20.9^{\circ }\mathrm{S}-26.4^{\circ }\mathrm{N}$ to depths of $\sim 1000$ km. Because the small-scale features of the mid/high latitude zonal flow may not persist to depth, we allow the zonal flow in this region to differ from the observed surface winds. We find that the Juno odd zonal gravitational harmonics can be fully explained by $\sim 1000$ km deep barotropic zonal flows involving the observed winds between $20.9^{\circ }\mathrm{S}-26.4^{\circ }$N and a few broad mid/high latitude jets.

arXiv commentPublished in JGR: Planets

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• A Global Simulation of the Dynamo, Zonal Jets, and Vortices on Saturn
• Strong resemblance between surface and deep zonal winds inside Jupiter revealed by high-degree gravity moments
• Investigating Barotropic Zonal Flow in Jupiter's Deep Atmosphere using Juno Gravitational Data