Zonal flow driven by deep convection in the major planets
Open accessAbstract
The cause of the fast zonal winds on the large gas planets is disputed. To investigate their possible origin by convection in the planets' molecular hydrogen layer, I study simple numerical models of thermal convection in a rotating sphere at low Ekman numbers for Rayleigh numbers up to 100 times critical. With stress‐free boundaries and high Rayleigh number it is possible to reproduce the observed magnitudes of the zonal and non‐zonal flow components at the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn. While only three flow bands are found for a thick convecting shell, the number increases to seven for a shell with an inner‐to‐outer radius of 0.6.
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Alternating jets on gas giant planets are either shallow, existing above about 10 bars, or deep, extending to tens of thousands of bars.
“on one hand, the alternating jets on gas giant planets are 'shallow', existing above 10 bars or so [15-17]; on the other hand, zonal jets are 'deep', extending to tens of thousands of bars [18-22].”
From Deep rotating convection generates the polar hexagon on Saturn (2020) · cites this paper as [19]
The Abstract and Introduction support a deep-convection explanation for alternating zonal jets on Jupiter and Saturn, including models with multiple flow bands. They do not express the jets’ depth in bars or establish that they extend to tens of thousands of bars. The shallow, roughly 10-bar alternative is cited to other sources in the citing sentence, not to this paper. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Christensen, U. R.
- Affiliations
- University of Göttingen (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Christensen, Ulrich R.
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2001-07
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 13
- Pages
- 2553-2556
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2004337164
- Cited by
- 123
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 2.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- GRO (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Computational Mechanics › Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geophysics › High-pressure geophysics and materials
- Keywords
- zonal flows, deep convection, gas giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, thermal convection, rotating sphere, Rayleigh number, stress-free boundary conditions
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