Is This the End of the Great Red Spot?

~ J.S. Pailly

I have sad news.  Right now, we may be witnessing the final death throes of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

For those of you who may not know, the Great Red Spot is an enormous storm that’s been raging on Jupiter for centuries.  It was visible to the telescope as far back as Galileo’s time, and it’s surely been around much longer than that.

But over the last few decades, the notorious G.R.S. has been slowly shrinking.  Recently, the rate of shrinkage has accelerated.  According to spaceweather.com, the storm is 20% smaller than it was a month ago.  In the time lapse animation below, you can actually see giant blobs of red break free of the Great Red Spot and then disperse into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Courtesy: spaceweather.com

Has the Great Red Spot suddenly reached a point where it can no longer sustain itself?  Or will the storm resurge and start to grow once more?  I don’t know.  At this point, I don’t think anyone knows.

But I would like to take this opportunity to pontificate a little on the value of space exploration.  Space exploration is expensive, and to many people it seems like a colossal waste of money.  Shouldn’t we be spending all that money trying to solve the problems we have here on Earth?

The thing is space exploration does help us solve our problems here on Earth.  Our ability to compare and contrast Earth with other planets has taught us so much!  Even Jupiter—about as un-Earth-like a planet as there can be—has added to our knowledge of how weather patterns form, sustain themselves, and change over time.

Whatever is happening to the Great Red Spot, this is an opportunity for us to learn.  I have no idea what we’re going to learn, but we’re going to learn something.  We’re going to know a little more about storms in general, which will help us refine our models about storms on Earth in particular.

Weather forecasts will improve.  Maybe we’ll be a little better at predicting hurricanes, and that, in turn, will save lives. All thanks to the space program and the Great Red Spot.

19 thoughts on “Is This the End of the Great Red Spot?”

      1. 350 million Americans spend a lot of dollars each year. I’ve read Americans spend more on birdwatching (which I also enjoy, but I’m not insane about it, so don’t take me seriously.) NASA is about 0.5% of the federal budget – that’s not stopping us from solving problems on Earth

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      2. I see. I asked because the topmost layers of the atmosphere are mostly composed of acetylene, water, CO2… other stuff like that. The hydrogen/helium layers are farther down. I believe the Juno mission is supposed to tell us how much all that hydrogen and helium influences the storms we see on the surface.

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    1. That’s probably why weather is the go-to example of hard-to-predict things. It will be interesting to see, in another month or so, how things stand with the Great Red Spot.

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  6. Maybe the Great Red Spot is a kind of holding cell for a prehistoric, vaguely feminine monster called Magbet that is finally breaking free. The only record we have of her comes filtered through Shakespeare, who tapped into some kind of genetic memory leftover from our ancient ancestors and wrote a fairly muddled version of it down for theater goers to enjoy.

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