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Wind Shear and the Role of Eddy Vapor Transport in Driving Water Convection On Jupiter

by Renaldo Burdick (2025-09-15)

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4f508b5a-82a7-465e-98ca-9f3de695b7bcRecent observations of convection in the jovian environment have demonstrated that convection is strongly concentrated at specific places on planet. As an illustration, observations of lightning show that the cyclonic features (e.g,. Meanwhile, the distribution of ammonia and high capacity pruning tool water vapor show a large enrichment near the equator, high capacity pruning tool which can also be suggestive of robust upwelling and convective activity. Marrying these completely different observations is difficult as a result of a lack of information concerning the characteristics of the deep jovian ambiance, high capacity pruning tool and Wood Ranger Power Shears a ensuing inability to observe the true deep source of the various convective phenomena. To understand the nature of these convective occasions and the role of the structure of the deep ambiance in driving convective events, we run simulations of cloud formation and convection using the Explicit Planetary hybrid-Isentropic Coordinate General Circulation Model (EPIC GCM). We differ the dynamics of the atmosphere by parameterizing the deep wind shear and Wood Ranger Power Shears official site finding out the ensuing effect on the energy, frequency and distribution of convective storms. We find that convection in our model is strongly tied to the native dynamics and the deep wind shear.



pruning-trees-electric-shears-branch-260Jupiter’s energy stability poses many questions concerning the processes that drive the dynamics of the ambiance and cloud formation on the planet. Certainly one of the important thing issues is in understanding this variety and decoding why particular areas are conducive of convection (or extra precisely, high capacity pruning tool present signatures of convective activity), while different don’t. For instance, belts typically show extra lightning compared to zones (Brown et al., 2018), and Folded Filamentary Regions (FFRs) and different cyclonic buildings show convective features and lightning more than anti-cyclones (Vasavada & Showman, 2005). To a primary-order explanation, cyclonic options on Jupiter generally are more unstable due to an growth of the isentrope close to their roots (Dowling & Gierasch, 1989), thereby explaining why belts, which have cyclonic shear, typically have extra convective exercise. However, distributions of volatiles and aerosol morphologies present that we should expect upwelling in the zones to supply excessive altitude clouds, and downwelling in the belts (see de Pater et al., high capacity pruning tool 2023, and references therein), which is at odds with the dynamical instability paradigm.



Recent observations utilizing microwave and radio instruments present weak correlation between the brightness temperature at depth and the cloud prime zonal wind profiles (de Pater et al., 2019a; Fletcher et al., 2021). While this could be indicative of deep zonal shear, the values obtained from inverting the thermal wind equation at depth results in uncharacteristically giant values (Fletcher et al., 2021). An equally seemingly interpretation may recommend variability in the concentration of ammonia, sustained by circulation within multiple stacked Ferrel-like cells (Fletcher et al., 2020; Duer et al., 2021). A comprehensive understanding of convection on Jupiter that successfully meshes these observations with the aforementioned instability criteria remains to be lacking. In this research, we use the Explicit Planetary hybrid-Isentropic Coordinate General Circulation Model (EPIC GCM, Dowling et al., 2006) to simulate convective cloud formation and examine the dynamics of convective storms on Jupiter. We use the cloud microphysics parameterization (Palotai & Dowling, 2008) and Wood Ranger Power Shears for sale the Relaxed Arakawa-Schubert (Moorthi & Suarez, 1999; Sankar & Palotai, 2022) convective scheme to simulate sub-grid scale moist convection in an effort to bridge the assorted observations of convection on Jupiter.



Convection in the ambiance is through the era of buoyant instability. Moorthi & Suarez, 1999; Sankar & Palotai, 2022), all within the updrafting parcel. In massive scale convection, when the massive scale forcing (i.e., with respect to the numerical mannequin, this defines grid scale or bigger, while convective is usually sub-grid scale) from the dynamics will increase the bouyancy (and thereby reducing stability), the response of the atmosphere is thru convection, which creates a moist convective vitality flux that balances the speed of change of buoyancy. Note that this is not how the convection is handled in our mannequin, which options a more full formulation of the updraft entrainment profile, buy Wood Ranger Power Shears but is instead a reasonable assumption for sturdy updrafts to simplify the conceptual interpretation on this part. These three phrases represent three totally different physical processes in the atmosphere, which we dub the thermal, Wood Ranger Power Shears official site mechanical and chemical tendencies, respectively. We detail these phrases beneath. The primary time period is given by the speed of the change of temperature.



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