title: Aerosol influence on energy balance of the middle atmosphere of Jupiter.
abstract: Aerosols are ubiquitous in planetary atmospheres in the Solar System. However, radiative forcing on Jupiter has traditionally been attributed to solar heating and infrared cooling of gaseous constituents only, while the significance of aerosol radiative effects has been a long-standing controversy. Here we show, based on observations from the NASA spacecraft Voyager and Cassini, that gases alone cannot maintain the global energy balance in the middle atmosphere of Jupiter. Instead, a thick aerosol layer consisting of fluffy, fractal aggregate particles produced by photochemistry and auroral chemistry dominates the stratospheric radiative heating at middle and high latitudes, exceeding the local gas heating rate by a factor of 5-10. On a global average, aerosol heating is comparable to the gas contribution and aerosol cooling is more important than previously thought. We argue that fractal aggregate particles may also have a significant role in controlling the atmospheric radiative energy balance on other planets, as on Jupiter.
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA.
authors.forename: Xi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, California 91109, USA.
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: West
authors.affiliation: Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK.
authors.forename: Patrick G J
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Irwin
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA.
authors.forename: Conor A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Nixon
authors.affiliation: Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Yuk L
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Yung