Interaction between eddies and mean flow in Jupiter's atmosphere: Analysis of Cassini imaging data

Details Interaction between eddies and mean flow in Jupiter's atmosphere: Analysis of Cassini imaging data Interaction between eddies and mean flow in Jupiter's atmosphere: Analysis of Cassini imaging data

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006icar..185..430s&link_type=abstract

Icarus, Volume 185, Issue 2, p. 430-442.

Physics

27

Scientific paper

Beebe et al. [Beebe, R.F., et al., 1980. Geophys. Res. Lett. 17, 1 4] and Ingersoll et al. [Ingersoll, A.P., et al., 1981. J. Geophys. Res. 86, 8733 8743] used images from Voyagers 1 and 2 to analyze the interaction between zonal winds and eddies in Jupiter's atmosphere. They reported a high positive correlation between Jupiter's eddy momentum flux, ρuv¯, and the variation of zonal velocity with latitude, du¯/dy. This correlation implied a surprisingly high rate of conversion of energy from eddies to zonal flow: ˜1.5 3.0 Wm, a value more than 10% of Jupiter's thermal flux emission. However, Sromovsky et al. [Sromovsky, L.A., et al., 1982. J. Atmos. Sci. 39, 1413 1432] argued that possible biases in the analysis could have caused an artificially high correlation. In addition, significant differences in the derived eddy flux between datasets put into question the robustness of any one result. We return to this long-standing puzzle using images of Jupiter from the Cassini flyby of December 2000. Our method is similar to previous analyses, but utilizes an automatic feature tracker instead of the human eye. The number of velocity vectors used in this analysis is over 200,000, compared to the 14,000 vectors used by Ingersoll et al. We also find a positive correlation between uv¯ and du¯/dy and derive a global average power per unit mass, uv¯du¯/dy, ranging from (7.1 12.3)×10 Wkg. Utilizing Ingersoll et al.'s estimate of the mass per unit area involved in the transport, this would imply a rate of energy conversion of ˜0.7 1.2 Wm. We discuss the implications of this result and employ several tests to demonstrate its robustness.

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