A new explanation for Jupiter’s shrinking Great Red Spot

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the solar system’s largest storm, is shrinking, and new research may help explain why.

Located in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, the Great Red Spot is a swirling red-orange oval of high pressure over 10,000 miles wide. It has constant counterclockwise winds of over 200 mph, making it technically an anticyclone.

And over the last century or so, and especially the past 50 years, Mars has been shrinking: While its latitudinal extent has remained relatively constant, its longitudinal extent shrank from 40 degrees in the late 19th century to 14 degrees by 2016, the year NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrived on Mars after a series of orbits.

“Many people have observed the Great Red Spot over the past 200 years and have been as fascinated as I am,” said Dr. New Research In the journal Icarus.

“Many of them were not professional astronomers, just people who had passion and curiosity. Plus, the curiosity people show when I talk about my work makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself.”

Several Curiosity The issue with the Great Red Spot revolves around the many mysteries that surround it, despite it having been studied extensively. Astronomers don’t know exactly when the spot formed, why it formed, or even why it’s red.

In the study, Keaveney of the Yale Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and his co-authors Gary Lackman of North Carolina State University and Timothy Dowling of the University of Louisville focused on the influence of small-scale, ephemeral storms on the Great Red Spot.

The researchers performed a series of 3D simulations of the spot using the Explicit Planetary Isentropic Coordinates (EPIC) model, an atmospheric model for planetary applications developed by Dowling in the 1990s. Some of these simulations include: Interaction They simulated correlations between the Great Red Spot and small-scale storms of various frequencies and intensities, and excluded the small-scale storms in another group of control simulations.

Comparing the simulations suggests that the presence of other storms may have strengthened the Great Red Spot, increasing its size.

“we Numerical simulation “It may be possible to modulate the size of the Great Red Spot by giving it smaller storms, as is known to happen on Jupiter,” Keaveney said.

The researchers based their model on long-lived high-pressure systems observed in Earth’s atmosphere. These systems, called “heat domes” or “blocks,” occur periodically in the westerly jet stream, which circulates through Earth’s mid-latitudes. Abnormal weather like heat wave And drought.

The lifetime of these “blocks” is thought to be linked to interactions with smaller-scale, transient weather mechanisms such as high-pressure vortices and anticyclones.

“Our study has important implications for weather phenomena on Earth,” Keaveney said. “We have shown that interactions with nearby weather systems can maintain and amplify thermal domes, which sparked our hypothesis that similar interactions on Jupiter could maintain the Great Red Spot. Testing this hypothesis could further support this understanding of thermal domes on Earth.”

Keaveney said further modelling will allow researchers to refine their new findings, perhaps helping to shed light on the early formation of the Great Red Spot.