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Vorticity and divergence at scales down to 200 km within and around the polar cyclones of Jupiter

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 1280–1286 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Since 2017 the Juno spacecraft has observed a cyclone at the north pole of Jupiter surrounded by eight smaller cyclones arranged in a polygonal pattern. It is not clear why this configuration is so stable or how it is maintained. Here we use a time series of images obtained by the JIRAM mapping spectrometer on Juno to track the winds and measure the vorticity and horizontal divergence within and around the polar cyclone and two of the circumpolar ones. We find an anticyclonic ring between the polar cyclone and the surrounding cyclones, supporting the theory that such shielding is needed for the stability of the polygonal pattern. However, even at the smallest spatial scale (180 km) we do not find the expected signature of convection—a spatial correlation between divergence and anticyclonic vorticity—in contrast with a previous study using additional assumptions about the dynamics, which shows the correlation at scales from 20 to 200 km. We suggest that a smaller size, relative to atmospheric thickness, of Jupiter’s convective storms compared with Earth’s, can reconcile the two studies.

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Fig. 1: Infrared image of the northern hemisphere as seen by JIRAM.
Fig. 2: Vorticity and divergence derived from two independent determinations of the wind.
Fig. 3: Covariances of the vorticity and divergence fields.
Fig. 4: Mean azimuthal velocity and vorticity and mean gravitational potential and potential vorticity.

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Data availability

JIRAM data are available online at the Planetary Data System (PDS) at https://pds-atmospheres.nmsu.edu/data_and_services/atmospheres_data/JUNO/jiram. The filenames of the images are listed in Supplementary Table 1. Calibrated, geometrically controlled radiance data mapped onto an orthographic projection centred on the north pole and velocity vectors derived from the radiance data are available in Supplementary Data 1–2.

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out at the California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), grant/cooperative agreement number 80NSSC20K0555, which was awarded to A.P.I., and a contract with the Juno mission, which is administered for NASA by the Southwest Research Institute. C.L. was supported by the 51 peg-b Postdoctoral Fellowship. JIRAM was supported by the Italian Space Agency through ASI‐INAF agreement numbers I/010/10/0, 2014‐050‐R.0, 2016-23-H.0 and 2016-1495 f23-H.1-2018. A.A., A.M., D.G. and F.T. were supported by INAF. C.P. and G.S. were supported by ASI. L.S. is funded by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Postdoctoral Fellowship. P.K. acknowledges funding from JPL/NASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Planetary Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Andrew P. Ingersoll & Shawn P. Ewald

  2. Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica – Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (INAF-IAPS), Rome, Italy

    Federico Tosi, Alberto Adriani, Alessandro Mura & Davide Grassi

  3. Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), Rome, Italy

    Christina Plainaki & Giuseppe Sindoni

  4. Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Cheng Li

  5. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Lia Siegelman & William R. Young

  6. Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Patrice Klein

  7. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Patrice Klein

  8. LMD/IPSL, Ecole Normale Supérieure, CNRS, Paris, France

    Patrice Klein

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Contributions

A.P.I. led the research and wrote the document. S.P.E. conducted the data analysis and prepared the figures. F.T. prepared the geometric tables that were used in the analysis. A.A., A.M., D.G., C.P. and G.S. oversaw the successful functioning of the JIRAM instrument and provided expertise on using it for image processing. C.L., L.S., P.K. and W.R.Y. provided expertise on vortices.

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Correspondence to Andrew P. Ingersoll.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Jonathan Aurnou and Stephen Thomson for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–7, Tables 1 and 2 and Sections 1–7.

Supplementary Data 1

Infrared brightness mapped onto a tangent plane at the pole.

Supplementary Data 2

Velocity vectors derived from pairs of brightness images.

Supplementary Data 3

Measured azimuthal velocity for Fig. 4.

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Ingersoll, A.P., Ewald, S.P., Tosi, F. et al. Vorticity and divergence at scales down to 200 km within and around the polar cyclones of Jupiter. Nat Astron 6, 1280–1286 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01774-0

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