Saturday, March 17, 2012

Jupiter’s Jet Streams Get Thrown Off Course

Jupiter’s Jet Streams Get Thrown Off Course:
Jupiter's jet streams. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
Jupiter's jet streams. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
Both Earth and Jupiter have jet streams; fast-moving winds that circle the globe. On Jupiter, those jet streams are constrained to very specific bands of the planet, while they meander around the Earth. We can see huge variations of weather when Earth’s jet streams move around – like unusually cold weather in Florida.
These strange weather patterns can occur on Earth when the jet streams interact with another atmospheric phenomenon called Rossby waves. We have them here on Earth, and they were first identified on Jupiter about 20 years ago.


No comments:

Post a Comment