STORMS on Jupiter are driven by similar processes to those on Earth. Although
Jovian lightning has been known about for years, its source was a mystery.
Tracking a storm with the Galileo spacecraft, Peter Gierasch of Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, found lightning flashing beneath banks of clouds
50 kilometres thick (Nature, vol 403, p 628). Jupiter’s atmosphere is
warmer below the cloud tops. “The clouds are so deep they have to be water,” he
told Â鶹´«Ã½.
He says that moist convection drives storms on Earth and Jupiter. “The
physical processes are the same, but the scale…
