GAFD Seminar: Keren Duer-Milner (Leiden University)

The atmospheric dynamics of the Solar System's giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune – offer a remarkable opportunity for studying rapidly rotating atmospheres at planetary scales. Despite their diverse compositions, sizes, and energy budgets, these planets exhibit striking similarities, including persistent, large-scale alternating zonal jet streams, coherent vortices, and ubiquitous wave activity. These common features suggest that fundamental dynamical mechanisms, dominated by rotation and convection, could govern their atmospheric behavior. This seminar synthesizes current understanding of these processes, highlighting the synergistic interplay between advanced observational data and insights gleaned from state-of-the-art numerical modeling. By integrating these approaches, we are increasingly able to disentangle the complex interactions shaping the observed atmospheric phenomena.  We will discuss potential jet-pumping and jet-dissipating mechanisms, including the role of stable stratification in the atmospheres, that might even suppress convection. By understanding the atmospheric dynamics of these giants, we establish a crucial context for interpreting the burgeoning wealth of data on exoplanets with similar bulk properties. As future missions like PLATO and Ariel promise to expand our knowledge of exoplanetary atmospheres, insights from the Solar System provide essential constraints and guide our understanding of the diverse range of atmospheric phenomena expected to exist beyond our planetary neighborhood. We will conclude by highlighting key open questions and discussing the broader relevance of giant planet atmospheric studies for the advancement of planetary science and our understanding of atmospheric processes in the universe.