One is relatively small, rocky, and habitable. The other is absolutely enormous, completely lacking in solidity, and raging with colossal storms. Yet, if you look at some satellite pictures of marine phytoplankton blooms here on Earth next to pictures of atmospheric turbulence at Jupiter's poles, it can be hard to tell them apart.It's a striking similarity, and one that has finally led us to an answer as to what causes Jupiter's spectacular turbulence: moist convection.
The infrared images allowed them to see the temperatures of these images; hotter regions represent thinner clouds, and cooler ones represent thicker clouds.This level of detail allowed the team to figure out how the turbulence occurs. They found that rapidly rising convective upwellings of hot, less dense air from origins less than 100 kilometers across transfers energy upwards into the giant cyclones, feeding and sustaining them.
This type of energy transfer hasn't been observed on any other planet. Interestingly, it resembles idealized studies of rapidly rotating ; that's convection in which a horizontal lower layer of fluid is heated and rises into the cooler layer above. This similarity supports the model of moist convection in the Jovian polar cyclones.This finding started with Earth and an uncanny similarity between our home planet and Jupiter. It also boomerangs back to Earth: it might be able to provide some insights into our own atmospheric processes, the researchers said.
Moist
Moist Convection? I had that once, but you can get creams for it now.
Moist
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