August 6, 2020

Clouds on Jupiter seen by Juno (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill © CC BY)

Three articles, one published in the journal “Nature” and two published in the journal “Geophysical Research: Planets”, report various aspects of research on the clouds of the planet Jupiter. Three teams of researchers with various members in common, coordinated by the French CNRS’s Laboratoire Lagrange and NASA’s JPL, used data collected by the Juno space probe to analyze various aspects of the role of water in the violent storms in the Jovian atmosphere. Lightning strikes originate in a solution of water and ammonia, substances that can form a sort of hailstones, nicknamed mushballs by the researchers, which play a key role in the atmospheric dynamics of this gas planet.