Experts have found that the winds in the stratosphere of Jupiter’s atmosphere are three times faster than the most powerful tornadoes on Earth.
Scientists have discovered winds reaching 1,450 km / h near the pole of Jupiter – the fifth planet from the Sun, Cnet reported on March 18. Jupiter has extreme wind conditions, but experts have little information about the central part of the atmosphere or the stratosphere.
Usually, they can estimate wind speed by following moving clouds. However, Jupiter’s stratosphere is completely cloudless, unlike other atmospheric layers. The team had to measure wind speed due to the planet’s collision with Comet Shoemaker-Levy in 1994.
The impact caused hydrogen cyanide molecules to appear in the stratosphere of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Scientists use the ALMA telescope system (Chile) to track them. As a result, they found that powerful bursts of gas under the aurora were twice as fast as the famous Hurricane Great Red Spot on Jupiter and three times the strongest tornadoes on Earth.
“These gases can act like a giant tornado four times the diameter of the Earth and up to 900 km high,” said astronomer Bilal Benmahi of the Astronomical Laboratory in Bordeaux (France), co-author of the study.
“A tornado of this magnitude would be the only ‘meteorological monster’ in the solar system,” said Thibault Cavalié, senior researcher. The new study is published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The discovery of strong winds in the middle part of Jupiter’s atmosphere surprised scientists as they predicted a much lower wind speed at this altitude. The team hopes that spacecraft flying to Jupiter in the future, such as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) JUICE, will help observe the planet in more detail.
