English

The vertical structure of Jupiter's equatorial zonal wind above the cloud deck, derived using mesoscale gravity waves

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2013-03-11 v1

Abstract

Data from the Galileo Probe, collected during its descent into Jupiter's atmosphere, is used to obtain a vertical profile of the zonal wind from 0.5\mathbf{\sim 0.5} bar (upper troposphere) to 0.1μbar\mathbf{\sim 0.1\, \mu{bar}} (lower thermosphere) at the probe entry site. This is accomplished by constructing a map of gravity wave Lomb-Scargle periodograms as a function of altitude. The profile obtained from the map indicates that the wind speed above the visible cloud deck increases with height to 150\mathbf{\sim 150} m\,s1\mathbf{^{-1}} and then levels off at this value over a broad altitude range. The location of the turbopause, as a region of wide wave spectrum, is also identified from the map. In addition, a cross-equatorial oscillation of a jet, which has previously been linked to the quasi-quadrennial oscillation in the stratosphere, is suggested by the profile.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1303.2022,
  title  = {The vertical structure of Jupiter's equatorial zonal wind above the cloud deck, derived using mesoscale gravity waves},
  author = {C. Watkins and J. Y-K. Cho},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.2022},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in GRL

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:38:53.558Z