The winds of the Great Red Spot are accelerating on Jupiter

The winds of the Great Red Spot are accelerating

Ever since people invented the telescope in the 1600s, the eyes have focused on Jupiter. The first observation of the Great Red Spot, a huge storm over Jupiter, could have taken place in 1665. Sky watchers observed the giant swirling storm sporadically between 1831 and 1879. Then regular observations began and astronomers made doing their best to watch her from Earth. Their observations intensified considerably in 2009, when the Hubble Space Telescope first set its eye on the Great Red Spot. On September 27, 2021, scientists announced that they had learned that, from 2009 to 2020, the winds in the outermost ring of the Great Red Spot are accelerating. They said that these studies will allow us to learn more about the Earth’s atmosphere.

Data from the Hubble Space Telescope shows that the counterclockwise wind speed in the region furthest from the Great Red Spot increased by 8% between 2009 and 2020. Scientists call this area the Great Red Spot the high speed ring, with reason. Winds now peak at 400 miles per hour (nearly 650 km / h) in this area. During this time, the wind speed towards the center of the storm is decreasing.

Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, led the wind analysis. As he explained:

When I first saw the results, I asked “Does this make sense?” No one has ever seen this before.

He continued:

We find that the average wind speed in the Great Red Spot has increased slightly over the past decade. We have an example where our analysis of the two-dimensional wind map revealed abrupt changes in 2017 when there was a major convective storm nearby.

Hubble is Jupiter’s storm tracker

Hubble has measured wind speeds that have changed by about 1.6 mph (2.5 km / h) per Earth year. The space telescope can spot features of the Great Red Spot that are only 177 km (105 miles) in diameter. Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said:

We’re talking about such a small change that if you didn’t have eleven years of Hubble data, we wouldn’t know it happened. With Hubble, we have the precision we need to spot a trend.

Wong used software to track hundreds of direction and speed vectors in the Great Red Spot. Each time Hubble observed Jupiter, the software took new measurements. Wong said:

It gave me a much more consistent set of speed metrics. I also performed a battery of statistical tests to confirm if it was justified to call this an increase in wind speed. He is.

A story of change on the Great Red Spot

The Great Red Spot is constantly changing, not just with the speed of the wind. Sometimes observers report that it is paler or darker, and over the past 100 years it has shrunk and rounded. In the 1800s, scientists said it was three times the size of the Earth, while it is now a little larger than the diameter of the Earth.

Researchers can take what they learned from Jupiter and apply it to thunderstorm systems seen on other planets, such as Neptune. By comparing storms on different worlds, they can begin to understand what drives these storms and causes them to persist or disappear.

Bottom line: Winds in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot have accelerated over the past decade, according to data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

By NASA