Yohai Kaspi

Outer Planets’ Stormy Weather: All on the Surface

User Image jhalper | May 16, 2013
Have you complained about the weather recently? On the gas giants at the edges of our solar system, Uranus and Neptune, hurricane-like storm systems as big around as Earth blow 1000 km/h winds for years on end. Voyager II image of Neptune, showing storm features. Image: NASA But wait…What exactly constitutes weather on a giant gas planet? Here on planet Earth, there is a clearly delineated gas layer enveloping the solid/liquid layer we call home. Our weather arises from our planet’s rotation and the solar heating of its surfaces. On a rapidly-rotating gas planet (a day on Neptune is 16…