CaltechAUTHORS
Published December 13, 2008 | Version Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Strong jet and a new thermal wave in Saturn's equatorial stratosphere

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Cornell University
  • 2. ROR icon University of Maryland, College Park
  • 3. ROR icon Goddard Space Flight Center
  • 4. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

The strong jet, with a speed between 500 and 600 m/s, is inferred in the equatorial region of Saturn by combining the nadir and limb observations of Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) aboard the Cassini spacecraft. A similar jet was discovered on Jupiter (F. M. Flasar et al., 2004a). These discoveries raise the possibility that intense jets are common in the equatorial stratospheres of giant planets. An equatorial wave with wavenumber ~9 is revealed in the stratosphere of Saturn by the CIRS high spatial-resolution thermal maps. Our discussion based on the phase velocity suggests that the equatorial wave is probably a Rossby-gravity wave. The discovery of an equatorial wave in the stratosphere suggests that Saturn's equatorial oscillations (T. Fouchet et al., 2008; G. S. Orton et al., 2008) may be driven by vertically propagating waves, the same mechanism that drives the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) on Earth.

Additional Information

Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical Union. Received 29 July 2008; revised 30 September 2008; accepted 21 October 2008; published 13 December 2008.

Attached Files

Published - LIMgrl08.pdf

Supplemental Material - grl25131-sup-0001-readme.txt

Supplemental Material - grl25131-sup-0002-fs01.tif

Supplemental Material - grl25131-sup-0003-fs02.tif

Supplemental Material - grl25131-sup-0004-fs03.tif

Supplemental Material - grl25131-sup-0005-fs04.tif

Files

grl25131-sup-0001-readme.txt

Files (1.6 MB)

Name Size
md5:12ae696b0f44f279bb15586fa18ff9ad
9.1 kB Preview Download
md5:8bffb2e8d59c061c04411fda1147f9b0
68.0 kB Preview Download
md5:9a51276752b5b89048d212850c98dde2
112.6 kB Preview Download
md5:d34dc6579f397be72e428b121ba35645
746.6 kB Preview Download
md5:9f53f241382e418287ff5dd9dfbcb9b8
125.7 kB Preview Download
md5:891b70699647d35047151c40245305e4
526.1 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
12936
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:LIMgrl08

Dates

Created
2009-01-11
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-08
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)