New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change
By Sara Goudarzi
Staff Writer
posted: 04 May 2006
01:00 pm ET


A storm is brewing half a billion miles away and in a rare event, astronomers get to watch it closely.

Jupiter is growing a new red spot and the Hubble Space Telescope is photographing the scene. Backyard astronomers have been following the action, too.

"Red Spot Jr." as it is being called, formed after three white oval-shaped storms—two of which were at least 90 years old—merged between 1998 and 2000.

A similar merger took place centuries ago and formed the bigger and legendary Great Red Spot, a storm twice as big as Earth and almost 300 years old.

Close look

Close inspections of Red Spot Jr., in Hubble images released today, reveal that similar to the Great Red Spot, the more recently developed storm rises above the top of the main cloud deck on Jupiter.

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Little is known about how storms form on the giant planet. They are often described as behaving similar to hurricanes on Earth. Some astronomers believe that the spots dredge up material deep below Jupiter's clouds and lift it to where the Sun's ultraviolet light chemically alters it to give it a red hue.

The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

The study was led jointly by Imke de Pater and Philip Marcus of University of California, Berkeley.

"The storm is growing in altitude," de Pater said. "Before when they were just ovals they didn't stick out above the clouds. Now they are rising."

This growth signals a temperature increase in that region, she said.

Marking change

The global change cycle began when the last of the white oval-shaped storms formed south of the Great Red Spot in 1939. As the storms started to merge between 1998 and 2000, the mixing of heat began to slow down at that latitude and has continued slowing ever since.

The movement of heat from the equator to Jupiter's south pole is expected to stop at 34 degrees southern latitude, where Red Spot Jr. is forming.

This will create a big wall and stop the mixing of heat and airflow, the thinking goes. As a result, areas around the equator become warmer, while the poles can start to cool down.




Hey global warmers how in the heck can humans cause Juptiter to go through global warming? Its proven its the sun my friends.

[Aslkahuna]

Any warming on Jupiter will be most likely intrinsic because most of the heat that drives Jupiter's weather comes from internal sources. Will have to be natural in origin because I know of no one driving cars on Jupiter.

Steve

[x-y-no]

Hey global warmers how in the heck can humans cause Juptiter to go through global warming? Its proven its the sun my friends.

You need to re-read your article. It doesn't say Jupiter is warming overall, it says that there's a change in the distribution of heat happening, with a net movement of heat from the poles to the equator.

[Aslkahuna]

Both Red Spots are convective systems which means that the heat driving them is coming from below. It's an established fact that Jupiter radiates more heat than it gets from the Sun and it's that heat which drives the weather systems on the Planet. If Jupiter were getting a significant warming from Solar activity, it would tend to warm the upper atmosphere of the Planet thus capping convection not enhancing it. There could be some warming due to Solar activity but since Jupiter produces so much more internal heat than it gets from the Sun and since the Solar Factor would be so small in comparison it's obvious that this is all internal to the Planet with no outside factors involved but also entirely natural. Sorry, but this has absolutely NO bearing upon the GW issue.

Steve

[Supercell Hunters]

I think they taking more new moons forming around that planet. Seems enough for us

[Theo]

Both Red Spots are convective systems which means that the heat driving them is coming from below. It's an established fact that Jupiter radiates more heat than it gets from the Sun and it's that heat which drives the weather systems on the Planet. If Jupiter were getting a significant warming from Solar activity, it would tend to warm the upper atmosphere of the Planet thus capping convection not enhancing it. There could be some warming due to Solar activity but since Jupiter produces so much more internal heat than it gets from the Sun and since the Solar Factor would be so small in comparison it's obvious that this is all internal to the Planet with no outside factors involved but also entirely natural. Sorry, but this has absolutely NO bearing upon the GW issue.

Steve

Aslkahuna has got an excellent point here. However, all the planets are influenced, not only by the Sun, of course, but also by one another. The entire solar system is intergrated, and inter-connected.

[Aslkahuna]

Actually, a very good description of the Solar System is that it consists of the Sun, Jupiter and some debris. The Sun has 98% of the mass of the Solar System and Jupiter 98% of the rest. If it weren't for Jupiter being the size that it is in the location where it is at, it is very likely that none of the Terrestrial Planets would exist or would have been expelled from the System long ago. This is why the search for extrasolar Jupiters are so important because finding Planets close to Jupiter in mass and in a distant orbit like Jupiter increases the possibility of Earth type Planets within that system.

Steve

[Audrey2Katrina]

Actually, a very good description of the Solar System is that it consists of the Sun, Jupiter and some debris. The Sun has 98% of the mass of the Solar System and Jupiter 98% of the rest. If it weren't for Jupiter being the size that it is in the location where it is at, it is very likely that none of the Terrestrial Planets would exist or would have been expelled from the System long ago. This is why the search for extrasolar Jupiters are so important because finding Planets close to Jupiter in mass and in a distant orbit like Jupiter increases the possibility of Earth type Planets within that system.

Steve

Excellent point. And if memory serves me correctly, I believe they found a few Jovians (in fact some many time the size of our own) orbiting other stars. The Vegan region comes to mind; but I'm not exactly certain as to their location(s).

A2K

[bob rulz]

Yeah, I heard about this, me being the astronomy geek I am. However, I'm interested to know if they think it will grow into another Great Red Spot. I never heard anything about that.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Hey global warmers how in the heck can humans cause Juptiter to go through global warming? Its proven its the sun my friends.

Dang and here I thought it was because Jupiternites had finally invented their own model-T

[Aslkahuna]

As I mentioned in my posts above, that particular statement about the Sun being the source of the warming on Jupiter was incorrect because Jupiter's weather is totally internally driven by the heat flux from the interior of the Planet which is more than double the amount of heat Jupiter receives from the Sun.

Steve

[x-y-no]

Once again for those interpreting this as evidence of global warming on Jupiter - read the article again, it doesn't say anything of the sort. It says

This growth signals a temperature increase in that region, she said.

and

The movement of heat from the equator to Jupiter's south pole is expected to stop at 34 degrees southern latitude, where Red Spot Jr. is forming.

This will create a big wall and stop the mixing of heat and airflow, the thinking goes. As a result, areas around the equator become warmer, while the poles can start to cool down.

This is a change in the circulation pattern and thus the distribution of heat, not in the total amount of heat.

And as Aslkahuna has quite correctly pointed out, the great majority of the heat on Jupiter is internally generated anyway - the solar contribution is tiny and mostly confined to the very upper levels of the atmosphere.

[x-y-no]

Yeah, I heard about this, me being the astronomy geek I am. However, I'm interested to know if they think it will grow into another Great Red Spot. I never heard anything about that.

Dynamic models have shown that long term you can only have one stable red spot, so either they'll merge or one of them will take over.

[Aslkahuna]

The current new spot is the result of the merger of two white ovals that had persisted for years (originally there were three but two had merged some years ago). Being in a different latitude as the GRS, they had a different rotation speed than the larger feature and would periodically interact with it. Since this is likely to happen again it will be intersting to see what happens. They could merge, or one could absorb the other or something else could result from the interaction.

Steve

[bob rulz]

Yeah, I heard about this, me being the astronomy geek I am. However, I'm interested to know if they think it will grow into another Great Red Spot. I never heard anything about that.

Dynamic models have shown that long term you can only have one stable red spot, so either they'll merge or one of them will take over.

Ah. I didn't really think it would happen, but it didn't hurt to wonder about it.