Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot, known for centuries, has contracted 20 percent in the last few weeks. Large pieces of it have been observed breaking away; carried off in Jupiter's furious winds. This sort of rapid change in the G.R.S. is unprecedented. If it continues like this, the spot will be entirely gone within a few months.

Please find a link, below, to an article with further details. These include images of Jupiter, an animated sequence of images of the Great Red Spot with matter spinning away from it, and a scientific graph of the decline in the spot's size.



http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=07&month=06&year=2019

Certain online headlines call the shrinking of the spot a disaster as if we had anything to do with it. Why would it be considered a disaster?

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Certain online headlines call the shrinking of the spot a disaster as if we had anything to do with it. Why would it be considered a disaster?

It is a sure sign of Anthropogenic Jupiter Warming caused by our crashing a space craft into the planet! ;-)

That or it is the same as eye-wall replacement cycle in a typhoon.

Certain online headlines call the shrinking of the spot a disaster as if we had anything to do with it. Why would it be considered a disaster?

Given the size of Jupiter I doubt anything within or around our solar system could cause the red eye to collapse or change without us feeling some impact on earth.

The red eye is not so much of an interest to me. I was always fascinated by the counter motions of the bands of weather around it.

At some point that counter activity would effect each other.

The red eye and motions remind me of chaos theory. In chaos theory a seemingly stable movement \ system can come to halt or shift very quickly.

However from various sources it looks as if the red eye isn't reducing in it's volume. It may be shrinking in circumference but is actually bubbling out like a wart.

Jupiter may now have a great red wart... eek.

Another link:

https://astronomynow.com

Certain online headlines call the shrinking of the spot a disaster as if we had anything to do with it. Why would it be considered a disaster?

Best to pose that question to those who wrote those sensationalist headlines, it seems. . .

I find it interesting that the Great Red Spot is repeatedly losing material at intervals of about one week. This is close to the rate at which the GRS spins around once. It appears, then, to be losing material when one particular side of it is facing the same way.

The windward side is being battered by Jupiter's cyclonic winds. If the energy of this storm is fading in one particular sector, this may be sufficient to allow the prevailing winds to begin to tear it apart. Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been fading in color, for decades, and shrinking slowly in size for an even longer time. The open question is: what has caused the storm to weaken at a greatly increased pace, at this time?

For a feature that has lasted for almost two centuries, if not longer, the loss of better than 20 percent of its diameter in the course of a single month is remarkable!

Think of how storms on Earth dissipate - they are strong for a "long" time, then start to reduce in strength at an ever increasing rate.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The closest analogy to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter seems to be an Earthly hurricane. These typically lose energy when they pass over land, after having travelled over the ocean. Energy is dissipated by friction against the land. There is also loss of heat, which is a hurricane's prime energy. The ocean typically provides a hurricane with more heat than does the land.

These factors do not figure in the dissipation of a storm on Jupiter. There is no land masses, only gasses, and much deeper down, liquid hydrogen. If there is a solid core to Jupiter it is far from forming an interface with the atmosphere. This is probably why the Great Red Spot has persisted for such a long time. Something has certainly changed on Jupiter in the last month or so, and is markedly affecting the Great Red Spot. It's just not clear what this would be., or why it should be occurring only now.

While you posit why the spot is getting smaller, remember to also posit why the spot has been able to persist for two centuries.

Certain online headlines call the shrinking of the spot a disaster as if we had anything to do with it. Why would it be considered a disaster?

It is a sure sign of Anthropogenic Jupiter Warming caused by our crashing a space craft into the planet! ;-)

That or it is the same as eye-wall replacement cycle in a typhoon.

The shrinking of Jupiter's Great Red Spot may be due to a phenomenon like eye-wall replacement in a typhoon or hurricane. However, no matter has been observed moving inward, as happens in these instances, only outward.
There also seem to be changes in the cloud band surrounding the Great Red Spot. It used to flow all around the spot, forming a distinct oval. Now there is a wide gap in that oval, and an adjacent portion appears to be devolving into separate, wispy sub-bands.

A recent set of animated imaged illustrates the gap in the oval formed around the Great Red Spot by the surrounding cloud belt. Aside from a general disturbance in the area of the GRS, no explanation for this phenomenon has been suggested. Images linked below:

http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=154157