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My name is David Choi, and I study the weather on giant planets. When we look at

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Jupiter we're seeing the top of its atmosphere and its weather layer, and its

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weather layer contains a lot of interesting features such as jet streams,

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vortices, storms, and these particular features called hot spots.

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So hot spots are like holes in the clouds because they appear very dark when observed

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in visible light, but in near infrared light they appear very bright, and this

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indicates that we're seeing deeper down into warmer layers of the atmosphere. Hot

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spots have been previously studied by the Galileo atmospheric probe. In 1995

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the spacecraft released a probe that descended into Jupiter's atmosphere

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specifically at a hot spot, and this probe made the first in situ

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measurements and the only in situ measurements of Jupiter that exist today.

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So it's very important to understand how hot spot meteorology works, in order to

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place these in situ measurements from the Galileo probe in its proper

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In 2000 the Cassini spacecraft flew past Jupiter and created a series

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of still images that we compiled into time-lapse movies of Jupiter's

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atmosphere. Using these movies, we observed Rossby waves that caused

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north-south meanders in a jet stream south of the equator. With new movies we

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instead focused on hot spots. Hot spots are unique because we believe that there

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is a Rossby wave similar to what we previously detected, but instead of this

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Rossby wave moving north-south, it primarily moves up and down in the

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atmosphere. The downward portion of the wave pushes air down into warmer layers

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of the atmosphere. This causes any clouds that are embedded within the wave to

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evaporate and prevents further clouds from forming. So at any given time there

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are approximately eight to ten hot spots in Jupiter's atmosphere that are spaced

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roughly evenly apart from one another. We believe that each of the downward

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portions of this Rossby wave corresponds to the hot spots that we see on Jupiter.

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This new finding is exciting because it will allow us to re-examine the Galileo

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probe data, and allow us to better understand it and better place it in the

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context of Jupiter's overall global climate and atmosphere.

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Music

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