To the best of my knowledge, the Great Red Spot of Jupiter is not, in fact, Cliffords cousin, but a storm the size of three planet Earths.
Nor is Spot on a leash-It is moving around the belt. It is not fixed in one spot (I'm not trying to be punny...)

Ok, so this storm... What is going to become of it? Storms on Earth dissapate over time and new ones form. I've observed other storms on Jupiter come and go. So why is the Great Red Spot so long lived and humongous?
Will it eventually dissipate? If so- How long will it take? Why doesn't it follow form with a Hurricane in itsappearance in spite of other similarities? I don't see an eye in the storm.

I saw a program about it once and it seems that the storm is continuously "fed" so will never die while there is enough energy in the weather system.

It is my bet that there are similar spots on other gas giants around the Universe.

A book I read said that it will be there "If not forever, then at least as long as humans are there to watch it."

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We cant really make any accurate predictions on what is happening with the great red spot. Mostly cause we dont know the conditions in Jupiter's atmo well enough to do any modelling. All we can see is the top of the storm and since that hasnt changed much in the entire time we have been able to see it, we dont really know what is happening or why.

Sadly, from the threads about the Great Red Spot here on BAUT and many other references on the web, that was my conclusion too.
We just don't know much.

Yet if not for those words, what would science be for?

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I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Edited

Perhaps Saturn could take Spot home...

Get thee to a punnery.

Not that it matters much, but one difference between the Great Red Spot and (earthly) hurricanes is that the GRS is a high pressure system.

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Maybe we can send it some acne cream?

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Well, Velikovsky thought he knew what caused the GRS, but the celestial mechanics threw a wrench in that one.

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"Quaerendo inventis"

He was moving at too high a Veliokity to think straight. ;-)

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Our earthly experience with storm systems is that they change. When great spot junior formed and migrated towards daddy, is would be computationally rational for the senior spot to fall victim to the increased shear rates and die.

One gets to wonder if there is some relationship between the spot and Jupiter's equally strange powerful radio emissions - brighter than the sun.

The great spot remains a great mystery.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Does anyone know, is there any similarity between Jupiter's Great Red Spot and the high pressure systems which sit over warm water in the Indian and Pacific Oceans?

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/Correlation/ plots atmospheric maps. http://www.jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific...al_oscillation discuss the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d1/iod/ is on the Indian Ocean Dipole.

Well, it would imply a surface with a hot spot; which is not reasonable if this gas giant is gas, as advertised.

Otherwise, both the spot on jupiter and earthly highs rotate consistent with the cornwalrus effect. The Jupiter spot does not appear to be seasonal.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Did you mean the Coriolis effect?

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

This wiki picture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mslp-jja-djf.png shows the average pressure and location of the oceanic highs on earth. My question, recognising physical differences, is whether these terrestrial high pressure systems have similar stability to the Great Red Spot, and so, are they stable features of the earth when observed from space? I can't find anything more specific on the internet than the linked picture.

That is a superb username. I wish I hadn't already registered here.

Storms will always be on every planet with atmosphere because of this.

I always thought it was interesting that a topological concept can swirl its way into a meteorological application.

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I must consult the Squirrel Overlords on this startling revelation.
Will return shortly.

Can the nuts be able to live and grow in Jupiter?

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einstein

"The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge " - Bertrand Russell

With proper management.
However in that location, red squirrels may be necessary...

The GRB is so long "lived" and humongous because it is the best storm in the solar system--that is, it has the best design--and the design of a thing is the theory about how the thing works. It evolved in a sort of ecosystem composed of rival storms. The storms compete for energy; the smaller ones lose their identity when they get "eaten" by the bigger ones. The competition is rather similar to the process of natural selection in biology: there is variation in storms, the best varieties survive.

Probably, the GRB was formed as a fusion of two or three of the biggest storms. Their combined energy was probably enough to tap into a deeper, probably hotter layer of the atmosphere that exists beneath the visible layer, but, for whatever reason, doesn't mix with. This is evidenced by the fact that the GRB is red. So, the GRB is able to tap into the nuclear forces of the inner layers that are ordinarily unavailable to the surface storms that are primarily driven by solar energy. The situation would be analogous to one of those "smoker" ecosystems that are totally chemotrophic and that then grew a big reef big enough to extend into the photosynthetic zone ordinarily observable by humans.

There's no "eye" because the air sucked up from the lower layers is opaque, whereas the air sucked up through the eye of a hurricane is transparent.

Eventually, a crisis will occur--perhaps the GRB will deplete it lower level resources. More likely, the circulation of the bands that seem to keep the rotation of the GRB orderly will shift. The rotation pattern of the GRB will then become more chaotic, and it will split into two or three smaller storms. These, however, will no longer have the power to tap into the lower layer. They will retain their red color for a while, but then the redness would eventually smear into the background and the GRB will have lost its identity.

I see that "I'm taking my toys and going elsewhere" didn't last for long...

...or was that just for that one ATM thread?

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Well thank goodness for that, good to see you on these other sections.

I find all these ideas very useful as there is a such great deal of science that thoughts should come from so many very good sources.

We'll see about that. . . .

But since you brought it up, no, I won't be starting any ATM threads in the future, and I would not recommend anyone else with an original, creative idea to post there either; even if you manage to escape being bannned, the entire setup is structurally guaranteed to not be any fun.

Thank you!

So, as an anti-cyclone (high pressure system) the GRS (GRB?) should not have an eye. It is therefore more like earthly systems located over the big oceans. Surely this is an area where astronomical knowledge can productively link with atmospheric science? As I asked at: A better reference is
And a little more on this intriguing topic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtropical_ridge explains that “The subtropical ridge is a large belt of high pressure situated around 30ºN in the Northern Hemisphere and 30ºS in the Southern Hemisphere. It is characterized by mostly calm winds. Air flows out from its center toward the upper and lower latitudes of each hemisphere, creating both the trade winds and the westerlies." This looks rather like (adjusting for gas giant status) Jupiter’s spot. I imagine Earth’s continents make our air systems much more stable than those of Jove.

Robert, I think you might be wrong about what systems on Earth the GRB is analogous to. It is really more analogous to Earth-based hurricanes, than Earth based high pressure systems. You can read more about it here.

Hurricanes are low-pressure systems as follows:

By contrast, Jupiter's GRS is a eddy caused by the interaction of two bands of gases on Jupiter moving at different velocities relative to one another. How many spots you get is related to the relative velocities of the bands - the greater the relative velocity, the more the eddies. It's merely a function of turbulent flow.

The TV show, Ed, Ed, and Eddie has a fair amount of velocity, thus turbulence...