Li Cheng, de Pater Imke, Moeckel Chris, Sault R J, Butler Bryan, deBoer David, Zhang Zhimeng
Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Sci Adv. 2023 Aug 11;9(32):eadg9419. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg9419.
Planetary-scale giant storms erupt on Saturn quasiperiodically. There have been at least six recorded occurrences of past eruptions, and the most recent one was in 2010, with its whole life span captured by the Cassini mission. In 2015, we used the Very Large Array to probe the deep response of Saturn's troposphere to the giant storms. In addition to the remnant effect of the storm in 2010, we have found long-lasting signatures of all mid-latitude giant storms, a mixture of equatorial storms up to hundreds of years old, and potentially an unreported older storm at 70°N. We derive an ammonia anomaly map that shows an extended meridional migration of the storm's aftermath and vertical transport of ammonia vapor by storm dynamics. Intriguingly, the last storm in 2010 splits into two distinct components that propagate in opposite meridional directions, leaving a gap at 43°N planetographic latitude.
土星上会准周期性地爆发行星尺度的巨型风暴。过去至少有六次有记录的爆发事件，最近一次发生在2010年，卡西尼号任务捕捉到了它的整个生命周期。2015年，我们使用甚大天线阵探测土星对流层对巨型风暴的深层响应。除了2010年风暴的残余影响外，我们还发现了所有中纬度巨型风暴的长期特征、混合了数百年历史的赤道风暴，以及在北纬70°可能存在的一次未报告的更古老风暴。我们绘制了一张氨异常图，该图显示了风暴余波在经向上的扩展迁移以及风暴动力学对氨蒸气的垂直输送。有趣的是，2010年的最后一场风暴分裂成两个不同的部分，它们沿相反的经向传播，在行星图形纬度43°处留下了一个间隙。
