Problems of simulation of large, long-lived vortices in the atmospheres of the giant planets (jupiter, saturn, neptune)

Abstract

Large, long-lived vortices are abundant in the atmospheres of the giant planets. Some of them survive a few orders of magnitude longer than the dispersive linear Rossby wave packets, e.g. the Great Red Spot (GRS), Little Red Spot (LRS) and White Ovals (WO) of Jupiter, Big Bertha, Brown Spot and Anne's Spot of Saturn, the Great Dark Spot (GDS) of Neptune, etc. Nonlinear effects which prevent their dispersion spreading are the main subject of our consideration. Particular emphasis is placed on determining the dynamical processes which may explain the remarkable properties of observed vortices such as anticyclonic rotation in preference to cyclonic one and the uniqueness of the GRS, the largest coherent vortex, along the perimeter of Jupiter at corresponding latitude.