Prof. Peter Read

Abstract:

In recent decades, great progress has been made in our understanding of zonal jets across many subjects - atmospheric science, oceanography, planetary science, geophysical fluid dynamics, plasma physics, magnetohydrodynamics, turbulence theory - but communication between researchers from different fields has been weak or non-existent. Even the terminology in different fields may be so disparate that researchers working on similar problems do not understand each other. This comprehensive, multidisciplinary volume will break cross-disciplinary barriers and aid the advancement of the subject. It presents a state-of-the-art summary of all relevant branches of the physics of zonal jets, from the leading experts. The phenomena and concepts are introduced at a level accessible to beginning graduate students and researchers from different fields. The book also includes a very extensive bibliography.

Abstract:

We investigate the dynamics of Jupiter's upper troposphere and lower stratosphere using a General Circulation Model that includes two-stream radiation and optional heating from below. Based on the MITgcm dynamical core, this is a new generation of the Oxford Jupiter model [Zuchowski, L.C. et al., 2009. Plan. Space Sci., 57, 1525--1537, doi:10.1016/j.pss.2009.05.008]. We simulate Jupiter's atmosphere at up to 0.7 degree horizontal resolution with 33 vertical levels down to a pressure of 18 bar, in configurations with and without a 5.7 W/m2 interior heat flux. Simulations ran for 130000-150000 days to allow the deep atmosphere to come into radiative equilibrium. Baroclinic instability generates alternating, eddy-driven, midlatitude jets in both cases. With interior heating the zonal jets migrate towards the equator and become barotropically unstable. This generates Rossby waves that radiate away from the equator, depositing westerly momentum there via eddy angular momentum flux convergence and spinning up a super-rotating 20 m/s equatorial jet throughout the troposphere. There are 30-35 zonal jets with latitudinal separation comparable with the real planet, and there is strong eddy activity throughout. Without interior heating the jets do not migrate and a divergent eddy angular momentum flux at the equator spins up a broad, 50 m/s sub-rotating equatorial jet with weak eddy activity at low latitudes.

Abstract:

We examine the ammonia and water cycles in Jupiter's upper troposphere and lower stratosphere during spin-up of a multiple zonal jet circulation using the Oxford Jupiter GCM. Jupiter's atmosphere is simulated at 512 x 256 horizontal resolution with 33 vertical levels between 0.01 and 18 bar, putting the lowest level well below the expected water cloud base. Simulations with and without a 5.7 W/m2 interior heat source were run for 130000-150000d to allow the deep atmosphere to come into radiative-convective-dynamical equilibrium, with variants on the interior heating case including varying the initial tracer distribution, particle condensate diameter, and cloud process timescales. The cloud scheme includes simple representations of the ammonia and water cycles. Ammonia vapour changes phase to ice, and reacts with hydrogen sulphide to produce ammonium hydrosulphide. Water changes phases between vapour, liquid, and ice depending on local environmental conditions, and all condensates sediment at their respective Stokes velocities. With interior heating, clouds of ammonia ice, ammonium hydrosulphide ice, and water ice form with cloud bases around 0.4 bar, 1.5 bar, and 3 bar respectively. Without interior heating the ammonia cloud base forms in the same way, but the ammonium hydrosulphide and water clouds sediment to the bottom of the domain. The liquid water cloud is either absent or extremely sparse. Zonal structures form that correlate regions of strong latitudinal shear with regions of constant condensate concentration, implying that jets act as barriers to the mixing. Regions with locally high and low cloud concentrations also correlated with regions of upwelling and downwelling, respectively. Shortly after initialisation, the ammonia vapour distribution up to the cloud base resembles the enhanced concentration seen in Juno observations, due to strong meridional mean circulation at the equator. The resemblance decays rapidly over time, but suggests that at least some of the relevant physics is captured by the model. The comparison should improve with additional microphysics and better representation of the deep ammonia reservoir.