Zonal Mean Dynamics On Saturn From Cassini And Voyager Data

Details Zonal Mean Dynamics On Saturn From Cassini And Voyager Data Zonal Mean Dynamics On Saturn From Cassini And Voyager Data

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.3705r&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #37.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.487

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A high resolution global map of zonal mean zonal winds and potential vorticity in Saturn's upper troposphere and stratosphere has been constructed, assuming geostrophic thermal wind balance, from a combination of cloud-level winds (derived from Voyager and Cassini images) and profiles of temperature and molecular hydrogen para-fraction retrieved from measurements by the Cassini Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS) between October 2004 and March 2006. Away from the equator, the results show a clear pattern of alternating jet streams extending to polar latitudes, all of which are found to decay significantly with height between 200 and <5 hPa pressure. The equatorial jet also exhibits strong decay with height into the lower stratosphere, but with evidence of some more complex structure in the middle and upper stratosphere. Potential vorticity profiles show evidence for a hyper-staircase structure, much as found on Jupiter, though with some intriguing differences. Like Jupiter, Saturn's zonal flow appears to be close to neutral stability relative to Arnol'd's second stability theorem. This allows an estimation of the upper tropospheric Rossby deformation radius as a function of latitude, that ranges from 2000 km at high latitudes to more than 8000 km in the sub-tropics. These results will be presented and discussed in the context of their implications for global atmospheric dynamics on Saturn and the other outer planets.

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