New explanation for the shrinking of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the largest anticyclonic system in the solar system

The Great Red Spotlocated in the city. southern hemisphere of jupiteris an orange-red oval high pressure that rotates and is more than 16,000 kilometers wide.. It constantly blows more than 320 kilometers per hour counterclockwisewhat technically makes it anticyclone.

Something is happening to the Great Red Spot.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is shrinking for most of the century, particularly in the last 50 years. Although its latitudinal distribution has remained relatively constant, Its longitudinal extent has decreased from 40 degrees at the end of the 19th century to 14 degrees in 2016.when NASA’s Juno space probe arrived at the planet after a series of orbits.

“Many people have observed the Great Red Spot over the past 200 years and have been as fascinated by it as I have been.“, said Caleb Keavenya graduate student at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and lead author of a new study in the journal Icarus.

“Many of these people were not professional astronomers, they were simply passionate and curious. This, and the curiosity I see in people when I talk about my work, makes me feel part of something bigger than myself.“.

Part of the curiosity surrounding the Great Red Spot is that many mysteries that surround italthough it has been widely studied by astronomers They don’t know exactly when the spot formed, why it formed, or even why it is red..

For the study, Keaveny, a researcher in Yale University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and his co-authors: Gary Luckmann from North Carolina State University and Timothy Dowling from the University of Louisville, focused on the impact of smaller, shorter-lived storms in the Great Red Spot..

The researchers created a series of 3D simulations of the Great Red Spot using explicit model of planetary isentropic coordinates (EPIC), an atmospheric model for planetary applications developed by Dowling in the 1990s. Some of these simulations modeled the interaction between the Great Red Spot and smaller storms of varying frequency and intensity.while another set of control simulations excluded small storms.

Comparison of the simulations showed that The presence of other storms has intensified the Great Red Spot, causing it to grow..

“Using numerical simulations, we found that by feeding the Great Red Spot a diet of smaller storms known to occur on Jupiter, we can modulate its size.“Caveny said.

The researchers based their modeling in part on long-lived high-pressure systems observed closer to home in Earth’s atmosphere. These systems, known as “thermal domes” or “domes“, appear regularly in the westerly jet streams that circulate in the Earth’s mid-latitudes and play an important role in extreme weather events such as heat waves and droughts.

The durability of these “domes” This is due to interactions with smaller and more transient meteorological mechanisms, including high-pressure vortices and anticyclones.

“Our research has compelling implications for weather patterns on Earth.– Kaveny said.Interactions with nearby weather systems have been shown to maintain and enhance heat domes, leading to our hypothesis that similar interactions on Jupiter may maintain the Great Red Spot. By confirming this hypothesis, we provide further support for our understanding of heat domes on Earth.“.

Keaveny said additional modeling will allow researchers to refine the new results and possibly shed light on the original formation of the Great Red Spot.

Link

Caleb W. Keaveney et al. The influence of transient vortex interactions on the size and strength of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Icarus. (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2024.116196