Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has changed shape and winds have increased around the outside over the past decade

When a storm erupts, it will be no larger than the Great Red Spot that rages on Jupiter’s surface.

The raging clouds from the largest storm in the solar system could engulf the entire Earth.

The winds swirling around the outer edge are about twice the intensity of a Category 5 hurricane.

Over the past decade, these winds have begun to increase, according to new research published in Geophysical Research Journal.

Spots change shape.

“The shape of the cigar is becoming increasingly rounded,” said the study’s lead author, astrophysicist Mike Wong of the University of California, Berkeley.

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Changing buyer’s place

The strange behavior of Jupiter’s weather system has intrigued scientists and amateur astronomers for at least 150 years.

“I love that Jupiter’s storms change all the time,” said amateur astronomer Andy Casely, who took the picture of the giant planet from his Sydney backyard.

“He really enjoyed the weather in every sense of the word.

“All storms move in relation to one another and new ones will arise, and the belts will change from month to month, and from year to year.”

Although Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has remained at the same latitude since it was first observed in 1870, it has halved in size. He’s been having a hard time lately.

In 2016-2017, another giant storm appeared nearby.

Then in 2019, Dr. Casely and a worldwide network of amateur astronomers pick up the shards from the fallen point.

“Red spots are usually just these round spots, [but we saw] kata Dr Casely.

“When we processed the image, it was very clear that there were small parts coming out of it.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before or since.”

Find a little surprise

To find out what was going on, Dr. Wong and his colleagues turned to the Hubble Space Telescope.

They analyzed the motion of cloud features captured in one Jupiter day – 10 Earth hours – in a series of high-resolution images taken between 2009 and 2020.

Observations show that the width of the patch to the east and west is shrinking by 1,900 km per year.

At the same time, winds beyond the red dot increased 8 percent during this time to around 370 kilometers per hour.

Meanwhile, the wind in the inner ring is closer to the breeze.

“[The finding] It was a bit of a surprise,” said Dr. Wong.

Helen Maynard-Casley, a planetary scientist with the Australian Organization of Nuclear Science and Technology (ANSTO) who was not involved in the research, said the new study could help us understand why the macula is shrinking and whether the desquamation event has anything to do with it. This is amazing.

“The red dot is a window to dynamics The atmosphere is cheerful,” said Dr. Maynard-Casley.

“If we can understand it, maybe we can understand what’s going on in a much deeper and more global way too.”

Jupiter’s weather system is generated by rising heat from the planet’s interior.

“We know it’s the heat that drives the movement, but we’re still trying to figure out what every detail is like,” said Dr. People.

Look for clues on the ground

Evidence of what could happen at a red dot on Earth can be found in a phenomenon called the “Meddies”.

These pancake-shaped salty whirlpools flow from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, where they can persist for a long time.

“One of them has been decreasing for a year and also accelerating, so we wondered if there might be a joint process,” said Dr. Wong.

Unlike the whirlpools in Earth’s oceans, the Great Red Spot is caught between two groups of storms, above and below, that rotate in opposite directions.

There is a possibility, said Dr. Wong, that when storms hover over Jupiter, they mix up their surroundings.

This could explain what has happened immediately over the last few years.

“We can’t prove it [appearance of the new storm nearby in 2016–17] It was related to changes in the winds in and around the Great Red Spot at the same time, but interestingly enough, it happened at the same time,” said Dr. Wong.

This is also in line with observations made by amateur astronomers, including Dr. Casely, about the peeling incident.

Initially, it was speculated that the pieces “peeled off” from the sides indicated that the stain had come off.

but in search Published in the Journal of Geophysical Letters earlier this yearThe event was not a sign that the macula was collapsing, the scientists said.

Instead, it was caused by a series of small storms hovering above the red dot.

“Shallow events immediately don’t really threaten to break up [red spot]”Because it’s much bigger, deeper, and much more organized than that,” says Dr. Casely, identified in the paper.

“It was amazing to be able to work with professionals, to be a relatively new person in the backyard and to be able to do some real-world science.”

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