The Formation and Maintenance of the Zonal Winds of Jupiter and Saturn

木星和土星纬向风的形成和维持

• 批准号: 9423305
• 负责人: Philip Marcus
• 金额: $ 14.5万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-04-01 至 1999-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9423305&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Formation; Maintenance; Zonal; Winds; Jupiter

94-23305 Marcus Prof. Marcus will model numerically the east-west winds in the upper troposphere (i.e., the visible cloud layer) of Jupiter and Saturn, using 3-D fluid-dynamics. The principal objective is to improve our understanding of why the winds are structured in zones or bands with alternating velocity directions from the equator to the poles. Additionally, the Principal Investigator (PI) will address other unresolved issues of those giant planets' atmospheres -- the number of bands, the magnitude of the wind velocities, the greater velocities of the Saturnian winds compared to the Jovian winds, and the relationship between the winds and the vortices embedded in them. The motivation for the work is that, unlike thermal convection in stars which can be reproduced and studied under laboratory conditions (albeit in simplified form), the mechanism of "east- west" winds of planetary atmospheres has not been modeled in the laboratory and all proposed methods for creating such winds remain mere conjectures. Yet we cannot claim to understand the outer planets until we understand their east-west winds. The PI will base his calculations on two different sets of assumptions: (1) The winds' vertical depth extends over tens of to several hundred density scale heights; and (2) the winds are confined to a thin vertical layer. The point is to decide between the two kinds of theories. The calculations will be done in both spherical and parabolic geometries. The latter geometry has the advantage that a parabolic dish containing a stable fluid overlying a convecting fluid can be built in a laboratory to test the validity of the numerical results, an experiment the PI is suggesting to be carried out by others.

94-23305 Marcus Marcus教授将使用3-D流体动力学，以数字对对流层（即可见的云层）中的东西向风（即可见的云层）进行建模。 主要目的是提高我们对为什么风在区域或带有从赤道到杆的速度方向交替的区域结构的理解。 此外，首席研究员（PI）将解决那些巨大行星大气的其他未解决问题 - 乐队的数量，风速度的幅度，与Jovian风相比，土星风的速度较大，以及风与风之间的关系和其中嵌入的涡流之间的关系。 这项工作的动机是，与可以在实验室条件下复制和研究的恒星中的热对流（尽管以简化形式）不同，在实验室中，没有对行星大气的“东西”风的机制进行建模，并且所有提出的方法用于造成这种风的拟议方法。 然而，除非我们了解它们的东西风，否则我们不能声称要理解外行星。 PI将其计算基于两组不同的假设：（1）风的垂直深度延伸到数十至几百个密度尺度的高度； （2）风被局限于薄的垂直层。 关键是在两种理论之间做出决定。 计算将以球形和抛物线几何形式进行。 后一种几何形状具有一个优势，即可以在实验室中建造含有稳定流体的抛物线盘以测试数值结果的有效性，这是一个实验，建议PI由其他人进行。