Uranus-Uranus has strange weather

A thick and turbulent atmosphere with winds blowing at speeds of 900 km/h, storms so strong that they could reshape continents if they were on Earth, and temperatures around minus 220 degrees

A thick and turbulent atmosphere with winds blowing at speeds of 900 km/h, storms so strong that they could reshape continents if they were on Earth, and temperatures around minus 220 degrees. Sounds like a cold hell, but this is the image emerging from the planet Uron-Uranus, revealed in high-resolution infrared images from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which reveal in incredible detail the strange weather on a planet that was once considered relatively quiet.
My first reaction was 'wow', and the second reaction was also similar" says Heidi Hamel, co-author of the article that described the new observations. "These images reveal an astonishing degree of complexity in the atmosphere of Uranus. We know that the planet was active, but until recently most of the activity was obscured by noise in our data."

With its beautiful blue atmosphere, Oron appears quiet at first glance, even when Voyager 2 approached it in 1986 it revealed only a smooth blue sphere, but now when you focus on it you see a big picture of a weather system and although these are usually less violent storms than on Earth , the weather in Oron is strange.

According to Larry Sromovsky, from the University of Wisconsin in Madison who led the research using the KC 2 telescope, "Some of these weather systems remain at fixed latitudes and undergo changes in activity level. Others appear to drift toward the planet's equator while undergoing major changes in size and shape. Better measurements of the winds surrounding these weather systems are the key to uncovering their mysteries."

Sarumowski, Hamel and their colleagues are using infrared techniques to provide some of the most detailed observations ever obtained by any instrument at any observatory. "No other telescope can come close to these results." Sarobmovsky says.

What they saw before was invisible, mostly small but scattered weather formations and they hope that the movement of these formations will help them get a feel for the planet's strange wind patterns.

They observed bands of clouds south of Uranus' equator and swarms of convective formations in the planet's north polar regions. Such formations have not been seen in the South Pole region, but they are similar to the types of 'popcorn' - the type of clouds seen on Saturn. The north pole itself is not visible from Earth at the moment, but it is about to come into view and researchers would not be surprised to see vortex formations similar to those seen at Saturn's south pole.

The driving force of the weather formations must be solar energy, because Oron has no internal energy source. But sunlight is 900 times weaker than on Earth because Uron is 30 times farther from the Sun than on Earth, so there is not the same intensity of radiation that drives the system," says Sromovsky. "Therefore, Oron's atmosphere must operate like a very efficient machine with very little wastage. Still, the weather variability we see seems to defy these requirements.”

One possible explanation is that the methane is pushed northward by the atmospheric gyre band towards the pole where it rises up and forms the gyre formations seen in the new images. The phenomenon may be seasonal, the team says, but they are still working on trying to get seasonal trends in Uranus' winds.

"Uranus changes" he said. "And there is definitely something different in the two polar regions. "
The images were published at the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences meeting.

Uranus has Bizarre Weather