A central theme this year is vortex-wave interactions. The subsession is scheduled on Wednesday 27 April 2000 in the afternoon. We review observations and models of giant planet atmospheres.
Vortices are predominantly anticyclonic.
They merge with each other and shed filaments after merging. Neptune's elliptical vortices oscillate in aspect ratio, orientation, latitude, and longitude. New observations of lightning suggest that moist convection powers the small anticyclones that later merge with the large vortices or give their energy to the zonal jets. This inverse cascade is well documented for Jupiter and is partly reproduced in numerical models. However the zonal jets violate the barotropic stability criterion, and numerical models thus far have failed to reproduce this feature.