Related papers: Moist Convective Storms on Saturn

In December 2010, a major storm erupted in Saturn's northern hemisphere near 37 degree planetographic latitude. This rather surprising event, occurring at an unexpected latitude and time, is the sixth "Great White Spot" (GWS) storm observed…

Saturn has an intense and broad eastward equatorial jet with a complex three-dimensional structure mixed with time variability. The equatorial region experiences strong seasonal insolation variations enhanced by ring shadowing and three of…

Moist convective storms in Jupiter develop frequently and can trigger atmospheric activity of different scales, from localized storms to planetary-scale disturbances including convective activity confined inside a larger meteorological…

The Ice Giants Uranus and Neptune have hydrogen-based atmospheres with several constituents that condense in their cold upper atmospheres. A small number of bright cloud systems observed in both planets are good candidates for moist…

Saturn's quasi-periodic planet-encircling storms are the largest convecting outbursts in the Solar System. The last eruption was in 1990. A new eruption started in December 2010 and presented the first-ever opportunity to observe such…

Saturn's Great Storm of 2010 - 2011 produced a planet-encircling wake that slowly transitioned from a region that was mainly dark at 5 microns in February 2011 to a region that was almost entirely bright and remarkably uniform by December…

We examine Saturn's atmosphere with observations from ground-based telescopes and Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We present a detailed analysis of observations acquired during 2018. A system of polar storms that appeared in the planet in…

The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…

Saturn's C ring contains multiple structures that appear to be density waves driven by time-variable anomalies in the planet's gravitational field. Semi-empirical extensions of density wave theory enable the observed wave properties to be…

Observations of planets throughout our Solar System have revealed that the Earth is not alone in possessing natural, inter-annual atmospheric cycles. The equatorial middle atmospheres of the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn all exhibit a…

Our analysis of Cassini/VIMS near-infrared spectra of Saturn's Great Storm of 2010-2011 reveals a multi-component aerosol composition comprised primarily of ammonia ice, with a significant component of water ice. The most likely third…

Saturn's Great Storm of 2010-2011 has produced two stratospheric hot spots, the "beacons," that eventually merged to produce a gigantic one in April and May 2011. This beacon perturbed stratospheric temperatures, hydrocarbon, and water…

We present an analysis of data about Saturn's atmosphere from Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), focusing on the meteorology of the features seen in the 5-micron spectral window. We present VIMS mosaics and discuss…

Saturn's northern summertime hemisphere was mapped by JWST/MIRI (4.9-27.9 $\mu$m) in November 2022, tracing the seasonal evolution of temperatures, aerosols, and chemical species in the five years since the end of the Cassini mission. The…

Numerous land and space-based observations have established that Saturn has a persistent hexagonal flow pattern near its north pole. While observations abound, the physics behind its formation is still uncertain. Although several…

The surface of both Jupiter and Saturn has magnificent vortical storms which help shape the dynamic nature of their atmospheres. Land- and space-based observational campaigns over time have established several properties of these vortices,…

We report on spectroscopic observations of Saturn's stratosphere in July 2011 with the Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (TEXES) mounted on the NASA InfraRed Telescope Facility (IRTF). The observations, targeting several lines of the…

We find an instability resulting in generation of large-scale vorticity in a fast rotating small-scale turbulence or turbulent convection with inhomogeneous fluid density along the rotational axis in anelastic approximation. The large-scale…

Jupiter's atmosphere features a variety of clouds that are formed from the interplay of chemistry and atmospheric dynamics, from the deep red color of the Great Red Spot to the high altitude white ammonia clouds present in the zones (bright…

Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, has stratospheric wind speeds that may be up to ~210 m/sec [1], circling Titan in about a day compared to Titan's slow 16-day rotation. Theoretical models to explain such super-rotating winds are not well…