Saturn's super-storms quite unearthly...
Post categories: Winds,Ìýguest bloggers,Ìýspace weather,Ìýstorms
| 18:00 UK time, Friday, 11 November 2011
Distance travelled ~ 809'788'800 km
High winds are a common occurrence on Earth but they don't often reach more than 150km/h. The record is held by the Tropical Cyclone Olivia as it moved across Australia in April 1996 which battered the land with gusts of 408 km/h. This is nothing compared to the rather more serene and beautiful looking planet Saturn. High in the atmosphere of this gas giant the wind speeds have been measured at a staggering 1800km/h.
The concept of what causes wind, which is effectively the flow of gas from one place to another, is pretty simple to understand. Take the Earth for example; warmth from the Sun heats the surface which then in turn heats the atmosphere in contact with it. As the air warms, it becomes less dense than the surrounding air causing it to rise which results in an area of low pressure as 'less air' is present. Other surface air will then rush in to effectively fill the void left from the rising air and we experience that as wind.
The storms we see on Earth are just extreme versions of this with areas of particularly low pressure at the centre. Typically they form over the oceans which are a vast reserve of energy. Water is very good at storing and retaining incoming solar energy and its this along with the moisture that gives storms their awesome power.
On Saturn the extreme storms that drive the winds are very similar in structure to those on Earth with low pressure systems but it's the source of the energy which sets them apart. Instead of vast bodies of water, the heat driving the storms on Saturn comes from deep within the planets core. When it formed around 5 billion years ago heat was generated when the pieces from the proto-planetary disk crashed together and its the slow but steady release of this energy which has driven Saturn's super-storms.
Image credit NASA
The Cassini spacecraft witnessed first hand one of Saturn's ferocious storms whilst it was orbiting the planet in December 2010. It was quite lucky given that Saturn is usually relatively storm free, unlike Jupiter however the lucky break gave planetary scientists a unique insight into the local weather system. The images show the storm covering nearly 4 billion square km and analysis of the lightning strikes showed a ten times more flashes than in other storms studied since 2004.
Kate Humble:
Helen Czerski:
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