Equatorial Jet Streams in the Atmospheres of Solar System Planets, the Sun, and Exoplanets

by Dr Neil Lewis (University of Exeter)

Friday 21 Mar 2025, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Prograde ‘superrotating’ equatorial jet streams are a ubiquitous feature of planetary atmospheres. Permanent equatorial jets exist in the atmospheres of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s moon Titan, and occur transiently in the atmospheres of the Earth and Mars. In addition, the atmospheres of tidally locked planets are expected to host superrotating jets (with some exceptions), and, finally, superrotation also occurs in the Solar convection zone. In this talk, I will discuss our understanding of the mechanisms that give rise to superrotation across these different environments. For the case of equatorial jets in the Solar System, I will highlight the difficulties faced by numerical models when they are used to reproduce the observed flows. Using our understanding of Solar System atmospheres as context, I will describe the observational evidence for equatorial jet streams on exoplanets, and discuss their interpretation using numerical models.