On the Saturation and Temporal Variation of Mean Zonal Flows: An Implication for Equatorial Jets on Giant Planets

Details On the Saturation and Temporal Variation of Mean Zonal Flows: An Implication for Equatorial Jets on Giant Planets On the Saturation and Temporal Variation of Mean Zonal Flows: An Implication for Equatorial Jets on Giant Planets

Sep 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007apj...666l..41l&link_type=abstract

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 666, Issue 1, pp. L41-L44.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Planets And Satellites: General

Scientific paper

Saturation and temporal variation of the mean zonal flow in rapidly rotating quasi-geostrophic spherical systems are investigated. Convective instabilities generate highly coherent small-scale eddies that feed energy into the mean flow via the inverse cascade mechanism. We show that this inverse cascade causes a continual piling up of energy in the mean flow, which in turn strongly stabilizes the system and hence dramatically reduces the amplitude of the eddies, leading to the reduction and saturation of the mean flow. This implies that the fast equatorial zonal jets on giant planets may be unsteady.

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