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Atmospheric confinement of jet streams on Uranus and Neptune

Nature volume 497, pages 344–347 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

The observed cloud-level atmospheric circulation on the outer planets of the Solar System is dominated by strong east–west jet streams. The depth of these winds is a crucial unknown in constraining their overall dynamics, energetics and internal structures. There are two approaches to explaining the existence of these strong winds. The first suggests that the jets are driven by shallow atmospheric processes near the surface1,2,3, whereas the second suggests that the atmospheric dynamics extend deeply into the planetary interiors4,5. Here we report that on Uranus and Neptune the depth of the atmospheric dynamics can be revealed by the planets’ respective gravity fields. We show that the measured fourth-order gravity harmonic, J4, constrains the dynamics to the outermost 0.15 per cent of the total mass of Uranus and the outermost 0.2 per cent of the total mass of Neptune. This provides a stronger limit to the depth of the dynamical atmosphere than previously suggested6, and shows that the dynamics are confined to a thin weather layer no more than about 1,000 kilometres deep on both planets.

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Figure 1: Observed cloud-level zonally averaged zonal winds on Uranus and Neptune.
Figure 2: over a wide range of interior models for Neptune.
Figure 3: Radial density profiles for two different interior models of Uranus and Neptune.
Figure 4: as function of the decay height H for Uranus and Neptune.

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Acknowledgements

Y.K. and O.A. thank the Helen Kimmel Center for Planetary Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science for support. A.P.S. and W.B.H. acknowledge support by NASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Environmental Sciences and Center for Planetary Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel,

    Yohai Kaspi & Oded Aharonson

  2. Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Adam P. Showman & William B. Hubbard

  3. Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Oded Aharonson

  4. Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel,

    Ravit Helled

Authors
  1. Yohai Kaspi
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  2. Adam P. Showman
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  4. Oded Aharonson
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  5. Ravit Helled
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Contributions

Y.K. and A.P.S. initiated and designed the research. Y.K. performed the dynamical gravity harmonics calculations and wrote the paper. R.H. performed the static interior model calculations and their interpretation. All authors contributed to the discussion of the results.

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Correspondence to Yohai Kaspi.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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This file contains Supplementary Text and Data 1-2, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Figure 1 and additional references. (PDF 228 kb)

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Kaspi, Y., Showman, A., Hubbard, W. et al. Atmospheric confinement of jet streams on Uranus and Neptune. Nature 497, 344–347 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12131

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