Turbulence Power Spectra in Regions Surrounding Jupiter's South Polar Cyclones From Juno/JIRAM

We present a power spectral analysis of two narrow annular regions near Jupiter's South Polederived from data acquired by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper instrument onboard NASA's Junomission. In particular, our analysis focuses on the data set acquired by the Jovian Infrared AuroralMapper M-band imager (hereafter IMG-M) that probes Jupiter's thermal emission in a spectral windowcentered at 4.8 ?m. We analyze the power spectral densities of circular paths outside and inside ofcyclones on images acquired during six Juno perijoves. The typical spatial resolution is around 55 kmpixel-1. We limited our analysis to six acquisitions of the South Pole from February 2017 to May 2018.The power spectral densities both outside and inside the circumpolar ring seem to follow two differentpower laws. The wave numbers follow average power laws of -0.9 ± 0.2 (inside) and -1.2 ± 0.2(outside) and of -3.2 ± 0.3 (inside) and -3.4 ± 0.2 (outside), respectively, beneath and above thetransition in slope located at ~2 × 10-3 km-1 wave number. This kind of spectral behavior is typical oftwo-dimensional turbulence. We interpret the 500 km length scale, corresponding to the transition inslope, as the Rossby deformation radius. It is compatible with the dimensions of a subset of eddy featuresvisible in the regions analyzed, suggesting that a baroclinic instability may exist. If so, it means that thequasi-geostrophic approximation is valid in this context.