Atmosphere over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is surprisingly hot
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029981
New York Times : Despite Jupiter’s distance from the Sun, its upper atmosphere is extremely hot, several hundreds of degrees hotter than simulations have predicted—and the atmosphere above the planet’s Great Red Spot is even hotter. To try to determine where the heat is coming from, James O’Donoghue of Boston University and his colleagues used the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii to examine the emissions of a particular hydrogen ion that is abundant in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Based on the emissions’ brightness, the researchers say the heat is probably coming from below the Great Red Spot, perhaps in the form of acoustic or gravity waves that rise and crash in the upper atmosphere.
