One of the most hypnotic and lasting of our solar system’s features is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Scientists and astronomers have been fascinated by this swirling storm for centuries, and it makes a powerful case that its atmosphere is full of the planet’s turbulent spirit. A massive high-pressure storm that has been around 350 years or more is being referred to as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot when people ask “What is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot?” However, the origin, its longevity, and even possible disappearance have been intensively discussed and studied.
And that storm, which looks like a deep red oval on Jupiter’s surface, is more than a weather beast. It is a puzzle that defies our comprehension of planetary atmospheres. But scientists are only just wondering how it has been going on for so long and what its future might be.
Since the 1600s, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been observed gigantic storm system. The hours upon hours or days or weeks of a hurricane are nothing compared to the centuries of this storm. It is a high-pressure system, or behaving as an anticyclone, with winds circling the low around it at horrible speeds.
Swirling clouds of ammonia, methane, and other compounds that give the storm its reddish hue make it up. The Great Red Spot gets its distinctive red color from scientists’ belief that chemical reactions in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, in combination with the planet’s intense radiation, color it in such a way. But here again, the question of its deep red appearance remains unclear.
The storm currently known as the Great Red Spot is the largest storm ever seen in the solar system. The 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) it was in the late 1800s made it big enough to hold about three Earths across. However, the storm, which has been shrinking over the years, has shrunk. Today, if this were a planet, it would be 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) wide, still large enough to engulf our whole planet.
Although it is a tiny thing, it is a supremely powerful storm. The wind speeds in the Great Red Spot may reach up to 430 kilometers per hour (270 miles per hour) — considerably greater than the strongest known hurricanes on the surface of the planet. With that, the storm becomes both a visual spectacle and an extraordinary force of nature to the point that we have never seen before on our planet.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is also compared to the Earth’s hurricanes. There is some of the same but there is plenty of difference. Like hurricanes on Earth, the powerful atmospheres found around Terzan 5 also form in layers over warm water and use heat and moisture to power their energy until the storm eventually dissipates over land, or water too cool to sustain the layer. In contrast, Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot, though a rotating high-pressure system, is not a hurricane as is, with a low-pressure system underneath.
In addition, landmasses and changing weather patterns limit Earth’s hurricanes in size and duration. In Jupiter’s deep atmosphere, whirling fast, where there is no surface to perturb its motion, the Great Red Spot remains. It permits the storm to keep rotating without weakening.
The Great Red Spot does not have the well-defined tropical structure of Earth’s hurricanes with an eye in the center. It’s a big, churning system that changes — we couldn't and can't stop that. Storms on the Earth occur seasonally and in response to the movement of air masses, but Jupiter’s storm is driven by winds whipped by powerful jet streams and heated by the planet itself, giving it a longevity no storm Earth has ever seen.
The longevity of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is one of the planet’s biggest mysteries. Jupiter is a gas giant and doesn’t have a solid surface so Earth’s storms weaken over time with friction from land and ocean surfaces. It has enabled the Great Red Spot to whirl for centuries.
The powerful jet streams of Jupiter are thought to help sustain the storm. Between the bars of these opposing jet streams the Great Red Spot sits and may be helped along by these jet streams to remain stable and to prevent the Great Red Spot from dissipating.
A second reason for its long survival is that atmospheric drag is negligible. Unlike Earth, Jupiter’s huge, flowing atmosphere gives the storm an endless source of energy by continuously regenerating its energy.
The Great Red Spot has been a constant of Jupiter’s atmosphere for centuries, but it is shrinking, and observations of late suggest the spot is becoming smaller. Since the last recorded storm in 150 years, the size of the storm has halved.
They are not entirely sure why this is happening. Other theory claims that the storm is losing energy because the turbulence in Jupiter atmosphere may break down storm's outer layer. The possibility is that the Great Red Spot is getting smaller, that it is being consumed by smaller storms and surrounding atmospheric currents, and therefore getting more and more tiry.
However, because of its small size, it is still extremely powerful. Yet, if this trend continues there is an important question: Will the Great Red Spot on Jupiter eventually disappear?
These scientists believe that someday Jupiter’s Great Red Spot will vanish completely. If the storm continues to shrink at this rate, the storm could depart within the next few centuries. However, in the case of Jupiter’s highly dynamic and very unpredictable atmosphere, it isn’t certain.
Other researchers think the storm could not completely disappear, but rather stabilize to a smaller size. New storms may even develop in the future, forming a similar or larger storm to that which replaced the Great Red Spot.
Valuable information about the storm’s structure has been gained by NASA’s Juno spacecraft which has been studying Jupiter since 2016. The data suggest that the Great Red Spot reaches lower than 500 kilometers (310 miles) below Jupiter’s cloud tops. That means the roots of the storm are deep, and may explain why it has been going on so long.
Analysis of what happened in the fading will be made possible through the upcoming observations by Juno and other telescopes to see if the Great Red Spot really is fading or just evolving into a different form.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is an unusual feature that is what one might say is the most enduring, powerful storm in our solar system. It is slowly shirking away, however, it is a leading feature of Jupiter’s atmosphere; winds and turbulence there are millions of times above what you find on Earth. But since the Great Red Spot is still in use by scientists studying its longevity and potential disappearance, it remains an important subject of research that teaches scientists as much about Jupiter as it does planetary weather systems.
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