{"id":352942,"date":"2024-12-02T09:27:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T08:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=352942"},"modified":"2024-12-02T09:27:18","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T08:27:18","slug":"straight-outta-science-fiction-the-magnetic-tornado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=352942","title":{"rendered":"Straight Outta Science Fiction: \u2018The Magnetic Tornado\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this seems like something that is out of cartoon with the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote (picture that episode with the giant magnet and \u201ctornado seeds,\u201d) this is actually real science, and it is happening on Jupiter. \u2013 Anthony<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Magnetic tornado is stirring up the haze at Jupiter\u2019s poles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unusual magnetically driven vortices may be generating Earth-size concentrations of hydrocarbon haze<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the University of California \u2013 Berkeley<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Jupiter\u2019s Great Red Spot has been a constant feature of the planet for centuries, University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered equally large spots at the planet\u2019s north and south poles that appear and disappear seemingly at random.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Earth-size ovals, which are visible only at ultraviolet wavelengths, are embedded in layers of stratospheric haze that cap the planet\u2019s poles. The dark ovals, when seen, are almost always located just below the bright auroral zones at each pole, which are akin to Earth\u2019s northern and southern lights. The spots absorb more UV than the surrounding area, making them appear dark on images from NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope. In yearly images of the planet taken by Hubble between 2015 and 2022, a dark UV oval appears 75% of the time at the south pole, while dark ovals appear in only one of eight images taken of the north pole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dark UV ovals hint at unusual processes taking place in Jupiter\u2019s strong magnetic field that propagate down to the poles and deep into the atmosphere, far deeper than the magnetic processes that produce the auroras on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
An artificially colored view of Jupiter as seen in ultraviolet light. In addition to the Great Red Spot, which appears blue, another oval feature can be seen in the brown haze at Jupiter\u2019s south pole. The oval, an area of concentrated haze, is possibly the result of mixing generated by a vortex higher up in the planet\u2019s ionosphere. These dark UV ovals also appear periodically at the north pole, though less often. Credit:
Troy Tsubota and Michael Wong, UC Berkeley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The UC Berkeley researchers and their colleagues reported the phenomena today (Nov. 26) in the journal Nature Astronomy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dark UV ovals were first detected by Hubble in the late 1990s at the north and south poles and subsequently at the north pole by the Cassini spacecraft that flew by Jupiter in 2000, but they drew little attention. When UC Berkeley undergraduate Troy Tsubota conducted a systematic study of recent images obtained by Hubble, however, he found they were a common feature at the south pole \u2014 he counted eight southern UV-dark ovals (SUDO) between 1994 and 2022. In all 25 of Hubble\u2019s global maps that show Jupiter\u2019s north pole, Tsubota and senior author Michael Wong<\/a>, an associate research astronomer based at UC Berkeley\u2019s Space Sciences Laboratory, found only two northern UV-dark ovals (NUDO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the Hubble images had been captured as part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project directed by Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and a co-author of the paper. Using Hubble, OPAL astronomers make yearly observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune to understand their atmospheric dynamics and evolution over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the first two months, we realized these OPAL images were like a gold mine, in some sense, and I very quickly was able to construct this analysis pipeline and send all the images through to see what we get,\u201d said Tsubota, who is in his senior year at UC Berkeley as a triple major in physics, mathematics and computer science. \u201cThat\u2019s when we realized we could actually do some good science and real data analysis and start talking with collaborators about why these show up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wong and Tsubota consulted two experts on planetary atmospheres \u2014 Tom Stallard<\/a> at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK and Xi Zhang<\/a> at UC Santa Cruz \u2014 to determine what could cause these areas of dense haze. Stallard theorized that the dark oval is likely stirred from above by a vortex created when the planet\u2019s magnetic field lines experience friction in two very distant locations: in the ionosphere, where Stallard and other astronomers previously detected spinning motion using ground-based telescopes, and in the sheet of hot, ionized plasma around the planet shed by the volcanic moon Io.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vortex spins fastest in the ionosphere, progressively weakening as it reaches each deeper layer. Like a tornado touching down on dusty ground, the deepest extent of the vortex stirs up the hazy atmosphere to create the dense spots Wong and Tsubota observed. It\u2019s not clear if the mixing dredges up more haze from below or generates additional haze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on the observations, the team suspects that the ovals form over the course of about a month and dissipate in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe haze in the dark ovals is 50 times thicker than the typical concentration,\u201d said Zhang, \u201cwhich suggests it likely forms due to swirling vortex dynamics rather than chemical reactions triggered by high-energy particles from the upper atmosphere. Our observations showed that the timing and location of these energetic particles do not correlate with the appearance of the dark ovals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings are what the OPAL project was designed to discover: how atmospheric dynamics in the solar system\u2019s giant planets differ from what we know on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStudying connections between different atmospheric layers is very important for all planets, whether it\u2019s an exoplanet, Jupiter or Earth,\u201d Wong said. \u201cWe see evidence for a process connecting everything in the entire Jupiter system, from the interior dynamo to the satellites and their plasma torii to the ionosphere to the stratospheric hazes. Finding these examples helps us to understand the planet as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Journal- Nature Astronomy The paper: 10.1038\/s41550-024-02419-0<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While this seems like something that is out of cartoon with the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote (picture that episode with the giant magnet and \u201ctornado seeds,\u201d) this is actually real science, and it is happening on Jupiter. \u2013 Anthony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":352946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691831771,691831770,691831772,691831774,691831773],"class_list":{"0":"post-352942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-earth-size-ovals","9":"tag-jupiters-great-red-spot","10":"tag-magnetic-field","11":"tag-uv-dark-ovals-nudo","12":"tag-uv-dark-ovals-sudo","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/08b6fa11517_50201386_tornade-desert.jpg?fit=1920%2C1188&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1tOC","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":252441,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252441","url_meta":{"origin":352942,"position":0},"title":"Media Ignores Real-World Data When It Comes to Tornadoes and Climate Change","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/04\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"As a result, fewer and less violent tornadoes are occurring today than in previous periods, despite media claims that tornadoes are getting more frequent, stronger, or both.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0tornado-1876x1254-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C802&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0tornado-1876x1254-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C802&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0tornado-1876x1254-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C802&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0tornado-1876x1254-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C802&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0tornado-1876x1254-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C802&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":430885,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=430885","url_meta":{"origin":352942,"position":1},"title":"Space Mirrors to Save Solar Power? | The Climate Realism Show\u00a0#194","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"13\/03\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Join The Heartland Institute\u2019s Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, and special guest David Legates, Ph.D., who will be speaking at our climate conference next month. 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