Mushball formation in Jupiter's troposphere (IMAGE)
Caption
An illustration depicting how violent storms on Jupiter — and likely other gas giants — generate mushballs and shallow lightning. The mushballs are created by thunderstorm clouds that form about 40 miles beneath the cloud tops and fuel a strong updraft that carries water ice upward to extreme altitudes, occasionally above the visible cloud layer. Once they reach altitudes of about 14 miles below the visible cloud layer, ammonia acts like an antifreeze, melting the ice and combining with it to form a slushy ammonia-water liquid that gets coated with water ice — a mushball. The mushballs keep rising until they become too heavy and fall back through the atmosphere, growing until they reach the water condensation layer, where they evaporate. This ends up redistributing ammonia and water from the upper atmosphere (green and blue layer) to layers deep below the clouds, creating areas of depleted ammonia visible in radio observations.
Credit
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/CNRS
Usage Restrictions
No restrictions.
License
Public Domain