Abstract
Jupiter’s turbulent weather layer contains phenomena of many different sizes, from local storms up to the Great Red Spot and banded jets. The global circulation is driven by complex interactions with (as yet uncertain) small-scale processes. We have calculated structure functions and kinetic energy spectral fluxes from Cassini observations over a wide range of length scales in Jupiter’s atmosphere. We found evidence for an inverse cascade of kinetic energy from length scales comparable to the first baroclinic Rossby deformation radius up to the global jet scale, but also a forward cascade of kinetic energy from the deformation radius to smaller scales. This second result disagrees with the traditional picture of Jupiter’s atmospheric dynamics, but has some similarities with mesoscale phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. We conclude that the inverse cascade driving Jupiter’s jets may have a dominant energy source at scales close to the deformation radius, such as baroclinic instability.
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Acknowledgements
Support for R.M.B.Y. was provided by UK STFC Grant ST/K00106X/1. This work was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY11-25915. We are grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for their support of the International Network on Waves and Turbulence. Raw images were made available by the Cassini Imaging Science Team via the NASA PDS Atmospheres Node. Data sets C11 and S06 were kindly provided by D. Choi and C. Salyk. We wish to thank P. Davidson, B. Galperin, G. King, B. Marston, M. McIntyre, H. Scolan, F. Tabataba-Vakili, S. Thomson and A. Valeanu for useful discussions.
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R.M.B.Y. wrote the code to calculate the structure functions and spectral fluxes, and performed the calculations. R.M.B.Y. wrote the bulk of the paper with sections on background and interpretation written by P.L.R. Both authors designed the research, decided on the methods used, and discussed the results.
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Young, R., Read, P. Forward and inverse kinetic energy cascades in Jupiter’s turbulent weather layer. Nature Phys 13, 1135–1140 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4227
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys4227
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