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Dave Thurlow, Host

 

Here on earth, storm systems last at the most a couple of weeks. Imagine a storm lasting years or even decades. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook and today on the show, we're going to talk about one of the longest lasting active storms in the galaxy. Fortunately for us it's not on earth. It's known as the Great Red Spot, and it's on Jupiter.

I asked Neil Cumins, an astronomy professor at the University of Maine, why Jupiter?

NC: "Jupiter does not have any continents. So overall that planet is a giant liquid/gaseous body down to it's core."

It's this gaseous atmosphere that is the fuel for this 25,000 mile wide storm. How's it keep going?

Photo released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena (USA).

NC: "There's a heating mechanism which is not well understood below the atmosphere which provides heat just like a hurricane does here on earth in which the heating comes from the oceans in our case or from below the clouds in the case of Jupiter. And fortuanately for us, those storms on earth when there's sufficient heating to create these storms, they'll last only a couple of weeks.

DT: "Cause they'll make it either to land or to colder water, right?

NC: Right on all counts However, on Jupiter there's no land for them to reach and that great red spot storm has sufficient source of energy to heat it and cause the air, the atmosphere, the hydrogen and helium of Jupiter's atmosphere to swirl around like we see on the clouds on earth in a hurricane."

Wow... how 'bout a hurricane that lasts 10 years. Well no need to worry, the closest one is about 400 million miles away.

Our show is supported by Subaru and the National Science Foundation.