Planetary-Scale Thermal Waves in Jupiter's Atmosphere

Details Planetary-Scale Thermal Waves in Jupiter's Atmosphere Planetary-Scale Thermal Waves in Jupiter's Atmosphere

Sep 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996dps....28.2208a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #28, #22.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 28, p.1142

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We have reexamined data from the Voyager IRIS experiment to search for planetary--scale waves in the upper troposphere of Jupiter. The data used are temperatures in layers about one scale height in thickness centered near pressures of 140 mbar and 260 mbar, from three global mapping sequences taken by Voyagers 1 and 2, which provide coverage between 60deg S and 60deg N latitudes. To analyze the data, deviations of the temperatures from the zonal mean for each of the maps were grouped into 5 degree latitude bins, and a Lomb-Scargle periodogram analysis, which does not require uniform data spacing, applied to each latitude bin. The two Voyager 1 maps were also combined to provide greater sensitivity and allow estimation of phase velocities. As found by Magalh\ aes et al. (Icarus, 88, 39--72, 1990), the zonal structure is dominated by a quasi-stationary wavenumber 1. At 260 mbar, wavenumber 1 is significant (at the 90% confidence level) in latitude bins centered at 10deg S to 15deg S and the 17.5deg N bin in the Voyager 1 data. At 140 mbar, wavenumber 1 is significant in latitude bins centered at 10deg S to 15deg S, 37.5deg S to 47.5deg S and 15deg N to 25deg N. Least-squares fitting of zonal wavenumber 1 to the data shows that the phase of wavenumber 1 is approximately constant over the latitude range 30deg N to 20deg S, with a roughly 180deg phase difference at latitudes south of 30deg S; the phase change occurs over the latitudes spanning the Great Red Spot. Furthermore, the phase is essentially the same at 260 mbar and 140 mbar. The phase structure and quasi-stationarity suggest that we are seeing a globally coherent Rossby wave with a large vertical wavelength (or vertically evanescent at the level of observation), possibly being forced by the Great Red Spot. We are modeling the behavior of planetary-scale waves on Jupiter to test the above hypothesis. This work is supported by the NASA/Planetary Atmospheres Program.

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