The Breakdown of Cyclone/Anticyclone Degeneracy in Jupiter's Atmosphere: Modeling of Cloud Morphologies by Lagrangian Passive Tracers

Details The Breakdown of Cyclone/Anticyclone Degeneracy in Jupiter's Atmosphere: Modeling of Cloud Morphologies by Lagrangian Passive Tracers The Breakdown of Cyclone/Anticyclone Degeneracy in Jupiter's Atmosphere: Modeling of Cloud Morphologies by Lagrangian Passive Tracers

Nov 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997aps..dfd..eg05k&link_type=abstract

American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting, November 23-25, 1997, abstract #Eg.05

Physics

Fluid Dynamics

Scientific paper

Clouds associated with Jovian anticyclones are tight and elliptical while those of cyclones are filamentary and time-dependent. This has been used to argue that the controlling dynamics on Jupiter must distinguish between cyclones and anticyclones (and thereby rules out quasi-geostrophic (QG) models which treat them degenerately). It was argued that the filamentary clouds of cyclones cannot be the signature of coherent, long-lived vortices and therefore that 90% of Jovian vortices are anticyclones, but this confuses instantaneous streamlines with particle paths. Using the weakly-forced, weakly-dissipated QG equation we calculate statistically-steady vortex streets with a forcing that mimics convective overshoot from an underlying convection zone. Clouds act as Lagrangian passive tracers, but they are created in regions of upwelling (anticyclonic vorticity) and destroyed in regions of downwelling (cyclonic vorticity). Thus the clouds themselves break the cyclone/anticyclone degeneracy although the QG dynamics do not. For a small set of parameters both types of clouds are consistent with those of Jupiter. This puts bounds on the amount of turbulence, the magnitudes of the vertical velocities, and the strengths of these vortices, none of which have been previously measured directly.

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