Deep Clouds on Jupiter

Jupiter’s atmospheric water abundance is a highly important cosmochemical parameter that linked to processes of planetary formation, weather, and circulation. Remote sensing in situ measurement attempts still leave room for substantial improvements our knowledge abundance. With the motivation advance understanding atmosphere, we investigate observations models deep clouds. We discuss clouds isolated convective storms (including unique storm site North Equatorial Belt episodically erupted 2021–2022), cyclonic vortices, northern high-latitude regions, as seen Hubble Space Telescope visible/near-infrared imaging data. evaluate data continuum weak methane band (727 nm) filters by comparison with radiative transfer simulations, 5 micron (Gemini), spectroscopy (Keck), conclude approach mostly detects variation upper cloud haze opacity, although sensitivity deeper layers can be exploited if cloud/haze opacity separately constrained. The cloud-base function temperature, which must estimated extrapolating 0.5-bar observed temperatures downward condensation region near bar. For given base pressure, largest source uncertainty on local comes from temperature gradient used extrapolation. spatially resolved spectra determine heights—collected simultaneously spatially-resolved mid-infrared 500-mbar improved lapse rate estimates—would needed answer following very challenging question: Can Jupiter constrain abundance?