Gravitational signature of Jupiter's internal dynamics
Name
Flierl_Gravitational signature.pdf
Size
207.21 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ae196db7a0891c1b7d108381bf8b1b4c
Author(s)
Kaspi, Yohai
Hubbard, William B.
Showman, Adam P.
Flierl, Glenn Richard
Date Issued
January 2010
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Kaspi, Y., W. B. Hubbard, A. P. Showman, and G. R. Flierl (2010), Gravitational signature of Jupiter's internal dynamics, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L01204, doi:10.1029/2009GL041385. ©2010 American Geophysical Union.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Telescopic observations and space missions to Jupiter have provided vast information about Jupiter's cloud level winds, but the depth to which these winds penetrate has remained an ongoing mystery. Scheduled to be launched in 2011, the Jupiter orbiter Juno will make high-resolution observations of Jupiter's gravity field. In this paper we show that these measurements are sensitive to the depth of the internal winds. We use dynamical models ranging from an idealized thermal wind balance analysis, using the observed cloud-top winds, to a full general circulation model (GCM). We relate the depth of the dynamics to the external gravity spectrum for different internal wind structure scenarios. In particular, we predict that substantial Jovian winds below a depth of 500 km would lead to detectable (milligal-level) gravity anomalies with respect to the expected gravity for a planet in solid body rotation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2009gl041385
