![]() ![]() Tony Phillips | Credit: Lewis of MIT is a NASA Sagan Exoplanet Fellow. "We're already getting some hints that clouds might be common on these planets, but we don’t yet know if they’re made of rock."įor now just one thing is certain: The meteorology of hot Jupiters is out of this world.Īuthor: Dr. Select from the other forecast maps (on the right) to view the temperature, cloud cover, wind and precipitation for this country on a large scale with animation. Control the animation using the slide bar found beneath the weather map. "Silicates are predicted to condense in such an environment," she says. The Brazil Weather Map below shows the weather forecast for the next 12 days. Instead, Knutson speculates that hot Jupiters might have clouds made of silicate-that is, "rock clouds." Ordinary clouds of water and methane couldn’t form in such a hot environment. Meanwhile, Jupiter’s famous belts would widen so much that only two or three would fit across the planet’s girth. "Just imagine what that would look like-a pair of giant eyes staring out into space!" says Lewis. For instance, on a hot Jupiter the Great Red Spot might grow as large as a quarter the size of the planet and manifest itself in both the northern and southern hemispheres. If you take those models and turn up the heat, and slow down the rotation to match the tidally-locked spin of a hot Jupiter, weather patterns become super-sized. Over the years, planetary scientists have developed computer models to reproduce the storms and cloud belts in Jupiter’s atmosphere. "Weather on hot Jupiters," she predicts, "is really big." For example, it is estimated that 100 terabytes of weather-related data is generated daily. First, there is the sheer volume of geospatial data. #Big weather photos fullFor this reason, many organizations struggle to take full advantage of it. Dealing with large geospatial data sets presents many challenges. #Big weather photos softwareNevertheless, Knutson is willing to speculate using climate models of Jupiter as a guide. Big, big data needs the right software to yield big results. Without regular pictures, researchers can’t say what this kind of windy weather looks like. Researchers believe these thermal gradients drive ferocious winds blowing thousands of miles per hour. The maps show huge day-night temperature differences typically exceeding 1000 degrees. These exoplanet maps may seem crude compared to what we’re accustomed to on Earth, but they are a fantastic accomplishment considering that the planets are trillions of miles away. Even at night," she marvels, "this planet is ten times hotter than Jupiter." "We can see daytime temperatures as high as 2400 K," says Lewis, "while the nightside drops below 1200K. over the coming days, with flurries expected in the Plains, Midwest and Great Lakes, as well as storms in the Southwest. The most recent study, led by Nikole Lewis, a NASA Sagan Exoplanet Fellow working at MIT, shows a gas giant named HAT-P-2b. Frigid weather is forecast across the U.S. Since Knutson kick-started the research in 2007, nearly a dozen hot Jupiters have been mapped by astronomers using Spitzer. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope is the only infrared observatory with the sensitivity to do this work. This exoplanet weather map shows temperatures on a hot Jupiter known as "HAT-P-2b". ![]()
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