CUTTING EDGE

The winds of Jupiter

Juno is helping to reveal how the gas giant’s atmosphere circulates

The pattern of circulation in Earth’s atmosphere is pretty straightforward. The Sun warms air around the equator that rises, then rolls over through high altitudes before sinking down to the ground at latitudes near 30° north and south (around a third of the way to the poles). From there the moving air blows across Earth’s surface back to the equator. This is a giant convection current – just like the one that churns over the radiator in your living room – and the pair straddling Earth’s equator are called the Hadley cells.

There are three great atmospheric circulation cells in each of Earth’s hemispheres.