Other
Scientific paper
Oct 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.0101s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #1.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.407
Other
Scientific paper
Jupiter's cloud-level zonal jets are remarkably steady in time despite their sharp curvature (i.e., second latitudinal derivative of the zonal wind profile). The stable jets must be supported by a proper sub-cloud wind and thermal structure; however, the large-scale deep structure of the zonal jets and temperature remain a major unknown in the gas-giant planet atmospheres.
Past studies suggest two end-point scenarios of deep wind structures that allow stable cloud-level jets. The first shows that the jets are stable if they penetrate through the molecular hydrogen layer (Ingersoll and Pollard, 1982), although they do not address how the deep flow may be coupled to the cloud-level wind. Many other studies, though they may not directly address the shear instabilities, support this "deep jet” scenario (e.g. Heimpel and Aurnou, 2007); however, they do not rule out the possibility that the jets are shallow. Gierasch (2004) introduced a notable alternative to this "deep” picture. Through linear stability analysis, he showed that an isolated eastward jet that reaches a point of zero motion at 100-bar level, with Jupiter-like speeds and widths at the top, can be stable under certain conditions. However, his analysis contained several untested assumptions, and whether such flows are actually stable in a more realistic setting remains an open question. The possibility of stable shallow zonal jets on Jupiter remains largely unexplored, and this possibility deserves a thorough consideration. We present full-3D nonlinear simulations that test the stability of shallow zonal jets. We use Richardson number as a measure of vertical flow scale, and aim to show whether shallow jets are consistent with the observed jets and place theoretical constraints on the sub-cloud wind structure.
Our study uses the EPIC model (Dowling et al., 1998, 2006). The research has been supported by NASA Planetary Atmosphere grants to APS and TED.
Dowling Timothy E.
Sayanagi Kunio Max
Showman Adam P.
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