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Copyright © 2024 CGTN. 京ICP备20000184号
Disinformation report hotline: 010-85061466
Hubble image of Jupiter, June 27, 2019. /NASA
A team of American scientists has found out that Jupiter's Great Red Spot - the biggest windstorm in the solar system, would shrink within 950 days without influence of transient storms.
The findings were published in the latest issue of magazine Icarus.
Located in Jupiter's southern hemisphere, the Great Red Spot is a swirling, red-orange oval of high pressure with a width of over 16,000 kilometers. Observers have found out that it keeps getting smaller over the past 100 years, particularly over the past 50 years.
While its latitudinal extent has remained relatively consistent, its longitudinal extent has contracted from 40 degrees in the late 19th century to 14 degrees in 2016.
For the study, researchers from Yale University and the University of Louisville focused on the influence of smaller, transient storms on the Great Red Spot.
They conducted a series of 3D simulations of the spot using the Explicit Planetary Isentropic-Coordinate (EPIC) model, an atmospheric model for planetary applications developed by the study co-author Timothy Dowling of the University of Louisville in the 1990s. Some of these simulated interactions between the Great Red Spot and smaller storms of varying frequency and intensity, while another group of control simulations left out the small storms.
A comparison of the simulations suggested that the presence of other storms strengthened the Great Red Spot, causing the spot to grow larger. Without these storms, Jupiter's Great Red Spot would shrink in 950 days.