A Numerical Analysis on the Large-Scale Vortices of Jupiter's Polar Regions

The captivating winds of Jupiter's atmosphere, characterised by the iconic east-west bands flowing along it's equatorial region, have long fascinated researchers. The origins of these bands are well understood to be created by Jupiter's strong zonal wind jets. Recent imagery from the NASA Juno spacecraft has shown spectacular cyclones on the polar regions of Jupiter, vast in size, long-lived, and beautifully arranged in clusters of five to eight vortices around a larger vortex at the poles. Despite the prominence, the origin of these cyclones largely remain a mystery, motivating extensive international research.

This project aims to explain the formation of the large-scale vortices (LSVs) and how they interact with the convection layer of the Jovian atmosphere. In the depth of Jupiter's atmosphere, where convection currents and planetary rotation dictate the dynamics, the study employs a 3D rotating turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection model with Boussinesq dynamics. Using existing codes as a basis, the simulations will be run on the high-performance computing facilities to perform the computations with parallel processing, due to the dynamics being strongly non-linear. Specifically, the investigation will employ the deep model to explore the formation of LSVs under a low Prandtl number (the ratio of viscosity to thermal diffusivity) of order 0.01. This will allow for studying the stability of the LSVs over long periods of time.