Variability in Jupiter's Weather and Climate

木星的天气目前正经历着巨大的变化，有多次喷发，一个新红斑的出现，赤道和赤道以南的扰动，以及一个缩小的大红斑。当前这场剧变的速度之快是史无前例的。这个项目将绘制木星所有区域（除了两极）的速度场，误差小于每秒5米，这将导致涡度图只有15%的不确定性。速度场地图将使用最近测试过的自动测量云运动的技术，这些技术是从过去三十年来由旅行者号、卡西尼号、伽利略号以及最近的哈勃太空望远镜获得的卫星图像中测量云运动的。包括未观测到的大气参数（垂直分层、风速的垂直变化等）在内的数值模拟将通过遗传算法找到“最适合”的选择。这项研究将有助于更好地了解木星的短期和长期气候变化，甚至可能应用于地球的气候。除了在天体物理学、高性能计算和速度提取方面培养研究生和博士后外，这项研究中开发的方法应该对恒星的研究有用。该团队还试图将其开发用于生物工程，它们有望改善运动捕捉研究。

AST-0808200MarcusJupiter's weather is currently undergoing a great change with multiple eruptions, the appearance of a new red spot, disturbances at, and south of, the equator and a shrinking Great Red Spot. The rapidity of this current upheaval is without precedent. This project will map Jupiter's velocity fields in all regions (except the poles) with errors smaller than five meters per second, which will result in vorticity maps with only 15% uncertainties. The velocity field maps will be made with recently tested automated techniques of measuring cloud motion from satellite images obtained over the last three decades by Voyager, Cassini, Galileo and, more recently, the Hubble Space Telescope. Numerical simulations that include the unobserved atmospheric parameters (vertical stratification, vertical changes in wind speed, and others) will find the 'best fit' choice by a genetic algorithm. The research should lead to a better understanding of both short- and long-term climate change on Jupiter, with possible application even to Earth's climate.As well as training a graduate student and a post-doc in astrophysics, high performance computation, and velocity extraction, the methods developed during this research should be useful for studies of stars. The team is also trying to develop them for bio-engineering, where they show promise for improving motion capture studies.