Portal:Weather

(c) ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0

The atmosphere of Jupiter is the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. It is mostly made of molecular hydrogen and helium; other chemical compounds are present only in small amounts and include methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and water. Although water is thought to reside deep in the atmosphere, its directly measured concentration is very low. The nitrogen, sulfur, and noble gas abundances in Jupiter's atmosphere exceed solar values by a factor of about three.

The atmosphere of Jupiter lacks a clear lower boundary and gradually transitions into the liquid interior of the planet. From lowest to highest, the atmospheric layers are the troposphere, stratosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. Each layer has characteristic temperature gradients. The lowest layer, the troposphere, has a complicated system of clouds and hazes, comprised of layers of ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide and water. The upper ammonia clouds visible at Jupiter's surface are organized in a dozen zonal bands parallel to the equator and are bounded by powerful zonal atmospheric flows (winds) known as jets. The bands alternate in color: the dark bands are called belts, while light ones are called zones. Zones, which are colder than belts, correspond to upwellings, while belts mark descending gas. The zones' lighter color is believed to result from ammonia ice; what gives the belts their darker colors is uncertain. The origins of the banded structure and jets are not well understood, though a "shallow model" and a "deep model" exist.

The Jovian atmosphere shows a wide range of active phenomena, including band instabilities, vortices (cyclones and anticyclones), storms and lightning. The vortices reveal themselves as large red, white or brown spots (ovals). The largest two spots are the Great Red Spot (GRS) and Oval BA, which is also red. These two and most of the other large spots are anticyclonic. Smaller anticyclones tend to be white. Vortices are thought to be relatively shallow structures with depths not exceeding several hundred kilometers. Located in the southern hemisphere, the GRS is the largest known vortex in the Solar System. It could engulf two or three Earths and has existed for at least three hundred years.

Jupiter has powerful storms, often accompanied by lightning strikes. The storms are a result of moist convection in the atmosphere connected to the evaporation and condensation of water. They are sites of strong upward motion of the air, which leads to the formation of bright and dense clouds. The storms form mainly in belt regions. The lightning strikes on Jupiter are hundreds of times more powerful than those seen on Earth, and are assumed to be associated with the water clouds.

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A variety of cirrus and cirrostratus clouds over a field.

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• Wikinews weather portal
  • July 25: Heavy monsoon rains kill over 100 in India, many thousands evacuated
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• Weather of 2022
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April 13

2014: After skirting the coast of Queensland for two days, Cyclone Ita began moving southeastward over the Coral Sea near Mackay. Ita caused A$1.1 billion in damage in Australia.

April 14

1886: A tornado in Sauk Rapids killed 72 people, making it Minnesota's deadliest on record.

April 15

1956: An F4 tornado killed 25 people in the Birmingham, Alabama area.

April 16

1998: A deadly tornado outbreak struck Tennessee and Kentucky, including a rare F5 tornado that killed 3 people, and another tornado that struck downtown Nashville, Tennessee, killing one person.

April 17

1970: A multi-day tornado outbreak began in the southern High Plains of the United States, including 3 F4 tornadoes in the Texas Panhandle that killed 6 people.

April 18

2014: An avalanche killed 16 Sherpa guides working on Mount Everest.

April 19

2008: Typhoon Neoguri made landfall in Guangdong province of southern China, the earliest tropical cyclone to strike the nation in recorded history.

Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes ForMemRS (/ˈbjɜːrknɪs/ BYURK-niss, Norwegian: [ˈbjæ̂rkneːs]; 14 March 1862 – 9 April 1951) was a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who did much to found the modern practice of weather forecasting. He formulated the primitive equations that are still in use in numerical weather prediction and climate modeling, and he developed the so-called Bergen School of Meteorology, which was successful in advancing weather prediction and meteorology in the early 20th century. (Full article...)

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The scope of WikiProject Weather is to have a single location for all weather-related articles on Wikipedia.

WikiProject Meteorology is a collaborative effort by dozens of Wikipedians to improve the quality of meteorology- and weather-related articles. If you would like to help, visit the project talk page, and see what needs doing.

WikiProject Severe weather is a similar project specific to articles about severe weather. Their talk page is located here.

WikiProject Tropical cyclones is a daughter project of WikiProject meteorology. The dozens of semi-active members and several full-time members focus on improving Wikipdia's coverage of tropical cyclones.

WikiProject Non-tropical storms is a collaborative project to improve articles related to winter storms, wind storms, and extratropical cyclones.

Wikipedia is a fully collaborative effort by volunteers. So if you see something you think you can improve, be bold and get to editing! We appreciate any help you can provide!

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Original-content meteorology articles: longwave (meteorology), forcing (meteorology). Regional Snowfall Index see NWS plus RSI values for almost 600 snowstorms. See also WikiProject Meteorology's request page and WikiProject Weather's request page. More topics that are possibly encyclopaedic relating to meteorology may be found at Missing topics about Meteorology. See also: Needed-Class meteorology articles and Needed-Class Weather articles. Assess : See: Unassessed meteorology articles and Unassessed Weather articles Citing sources : Cloud, Temperature, Anticyclone, Atmospheric science Cleanup : Robert Watson (chemist), Cloud Expand : Cloud Appreciation Society, Atmosphere of Earth, Atmospheric science, Drought, Flood Featured article candidates : Cyclone Berguitta Featured article review : 2003 Pacific hurricane season, Great Lakes Storm of 1913 Featured list candidates : Timeline of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season Good article nominations : 1932 Atlantic hurricane season, Cyclone Fakir, Mojave Desert, Sumatra squall, 1931 Atlantic hurricane season, 2020 Atlantic hurricane season Maintain : See: Meteorology articles needing expert attention Photo : See: Wikipedia requested meteorological diagrams and Wikipedia requested images of floods Portal : Maintain the Weather portal Stubs : See: Atmospheric science stubs, Weather event stubs, Stub-Class meteorology articles, and Stub-Class Weather articles Translate : See: Storm articles needing translation Update : Tornado outbreak sequence of May 2004, Tornado outbreak of November 9–11, 2002 Verify : See: Weather articles with incomplete B-Class checklists Wikify : Lightning, Convective overshoot, Late-May 1998 tornado outbreak and derecho

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