Saturday, 12 February 2011

planet - Why don't storms on gas giants move to the poles, like hurricanes on Earth do?

The answer is the Coriolis effect, on Earth this produces cells within which storms move, converging towards the cell boundaries as you can see below.An illustration of the Coriolis effect on Earth.



Jupiter however spins much faster that the Earth which produces a stronger Coriolis effect and thus more cells. This is the reason why there are so many different coloured bands on Jupiter (see image below). So storms like the big red spot don't have as far to move laterally within these cells compared to hurricanes on Earth (in comparison with the planets size).



Image of the planet Jupiter, showing the many different colour bands.

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