Journal Article10.1038/NATURE10205
A giant thunderstorm on Saturn
Georg Fischer,William S. Kurth,D. A. Gurnett,P. Zarka,Ulyana A. Dyudina,Andrew P. Ingersoll,Shawn P. Ewald,Carolyn C. Porco,A. Wesley,C. Go,Marc Delcroix +10 more
TL;DR: Observations of a giant thunderstorm at planetocentric latitude 35° north that reached a latitudinal extension of 10,000 kilometres about three weeks after it started in early December 2010, which developed an elongated eastward tail with additional but weaker storm cells that wrapped around the whole planet by February 2011.
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Abstract: Lightning discharges in Saturn’s atmosphere emit radio waves with intensities about 10,000 times stronger than those of their terrestrial counterparts. These radio waves are the characteristic features of lightning from thunderstorms on Saturn, which last for days to months. Convective storms about 2,000 kilometres in size have been observed in recent years at planetocentric latitude 35° south (corresponding to a planetographic latitude of 41° south). Here we report observations of a giant thunderstorm at planetocentric latitude 35° north that reached a latitudinal extension of 10,000 kilometres—comparable in size to a ‘Great White Spot’—about three weeks after it started in early December 2010. The visible plume consists of high-altitude clouds that overshoot the outermost ammonia cloud layer owing to strong vertical convection, as is typical for thunderstorms. The flash rates of this storm are about an order of magnitude higher than previous ones, and peak rates larger than ten per second were recorded. This main storm developed an elongated eastward tail with additional but weaker storm cells that wrapped around the whole planet by February 2011. Unlike storms on Earth, the total power of this storm is comparable to Saturn’s total emitted power. The appearance of such storms in the northern hemisphere could be related to the change of seasons, given that Saturn experienced vernal equinox in August 2009.
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Citations
Ground-based observations of the long-term evolution and death of Saturn's 2010 Great White Spot
Agustín Sánchez-Lavega,Teresa del Río-Gaztelurrutia,M. Delcroix,Jon Legarreta,Josep M. Gomez-Forrellad,Ricardo Hueso,Enrique Garcia-Melendo,Santiago Pérez-Hoyos,David Barrado-Navascués,Jorge Lillo +9 more
TL;DR: Fenton et al. as discussed by the authors reported on the long-term evolution of the sixth Great White Spot (GWS) event that initiated at northern mid-latitudes of the planet on December 5th, 2010.
Herschel map of Saturn’s stratospheric water, delivered by the plumes of Enceladus
Thibault Cavalié,Thibault Cavalié,Vincent Hue,Paul Hartogh,Raphael Moreno,Emmanuel Lellouch,H. Feuchtgruber,C. Jarchow,T. Cassidy,Leigh N. Fletcher,F. Billebaud,Michel Dobrijevic,Ladislav Rezac,G. S. Orton,Miriam Rengel,Thierry Fouchet,Sandrine Guerlet +16 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used Herschel mapping observations of water in Saturn's stratosphere to identify its source, and showed that Enceladus is the main source of the stratospheric water.
Asymmetrical meridional expansion of bright clouds from Saturn's 2010 great white storm
Liming Li,A. Studwell,Timothy E. Dowling,M. E. Bradley,Ellen C. Creecy,Ronald J. Albright,Xun Jiang +6 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the mechanism behind the asymmetric expansion of the clouds in the northern hemisphere of the great white storm of 2010, showing that the associated bright clouds expanded asymmetrically with respect to latitude, such that the southern boundary of the bright clouds moved 2.7 times as far as the northern boundary during an 8-month period.
Disruption of Saturn’s quasi-periodic equatorial oscillation by the great northern storm
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reveal that the Earth's equatorial quasi-periodic oscillations can also be dramatically perturbed by events occurring far away from the equatorial region, an example of atmospheric teleconnection.
Numerical simulations of Jupiter's moist convection layer: Structure and dynamics in statistically steady states
Ko-ichiro Sugiyama,Ko-ichiro Sugiyama,Kensuke Nakajima,Masatsugu Odaka,Kiyoshi Kuramoto,Kiyoshi Kuramoto,Yoshi-Yuki Hayashi,Yoshi-Yuki Hayashi +7 more
TL;DR: A series of long-term numerical simulations of moist convection in Jupiter's atmosphere is performed in order to investigate the idealized characteristics of the vertical structure of multi-composition clouds and the convective motions associated with them, varying the deep abundances of condensable gases and the autoconversion time scale.
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