Strong temporal variation over one Saturnian year: from Voyager to Cassini.
Here we report the combined spacecraft observations of Saturn acquired over one Saturnian year (~29.5 Earth years), from the Voyager encounters (1980-81) to the new Cassini reconnaissance (2009-10). The combined observations reveal a strong temporal increase of tropic temperature (~10 Kelvins) around the tropopause of Saturn (i.e., 50 mbar), which is stronger than the seasonal variability (~a few Kelvins). We also provide the first estimate of the zonal winds at 750 mbar, which is close to the zonal winds at 2000 mbar. The quasi-consistency of zonal winds between these two levels provides observational support to a numerical suggestion inferring that the zonal winds at pressures greater than 500 mbar do not vary significantly with depth. Furthermore, the temporal variation of zonal winds decreases its magnitude with depth, implying that the relatively deep zonal winds are stable with time.
University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA. lli7@central.uh.edu
Liming
L
Li
Richard K
RK
Achterberg
Barney J
BJ
Conrath
Peter J
PJ
Gierasch
Mark A
MA
Smith
Amy A
AA
Simon-Miller
Conor A
CA
Nixon
Glenn S
GS
Orton
F Michael
FM
Flasar
Xun
X
Jiang
Kevin H
KH
Baines
Raúl
R
Morales-Juberías
Andrew P
AP
Ingersoll
Ashwin R
AR
Vasavada
Anthony D
AD
Del Genio
Robert A
RA
West
Shawn P
SP
Ewald
D063809:Satellite Imagery / Q000379:methods*; D018539:Saturn; D012621:Seasons; D018531:Spacecraft; D014887:Weather