Climate of Uranus - Banded Structure, Winds and Clouds

Banded Structure, Winds and Clouds

In 1986 Voyager 2 discovered that the visible southern hemisphere of Uranus can be subdivided into two regions: a bright polar cap and dark equatorial bands (see figure on the right). Their boundary is located at about −45 degrees of latitude. A narrow band straddling the latitudinal range from −45 to −50 degrees is the brightest large feature on the visible surface of the planet. It is called a southern "collar". The cap and collar are thought to be a dense region of methane clouds located within the pressure range of 1.3 to 2 bar. Unfortunately Voyager 2 arrived during the height of the planet's southern summer and could not observe the northern hemisphere. However, at the end of 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century, when the northern polar region came into view, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Keck telescope initially observed neither a collar nor a polar cap in the northern hemisphere. So Uranus appeared to be asymmetric: bright near the south pole and uniformly dark in the region north of the southern collar. In 2007, however, when Uranus passed its equinox, the southern collar almost disappeared, while a faint northern collar emerged near 45 degrees of latitude. The visible latitudinal structure of Uranus is different from that of Jupiter and Saturn, which demonstrate multiple narrow and colorful bands.

In addition to large-scale banded structure, Voyager 2 observed ten small bright clouds, most lying several degrees to the north from the collar. In all other respects Uranus looked like a dynamically dead planet in 1986. However in 1990s the number of the observed bright cloud features grew considerably. The majority of them was found in the northern hemisphere as it started to become visible. The common though incorrect explanation of this fact was that bright clouds are easier to identify in the dark part of the planet, whereas in the southern hemisphere the bright collar masks them. Nevertheless there are differences between the clouds of each hemisphere. The northern clouds are smaller, sharper and brighter. They appear to lie at a higher altitude, which is connected to fact that until 2004 (see below) no southern polar cloud had been observed at the wavelength 2.2 micrometres, which is sensitive to the methane absorption, while northern clouds have been regularly observed in this wavelength band. The lifetime of clouds spans several orders of magnitude. Some small clouds live for hours, while at least one southern cloud has persisted since Voyager flyby. Recent observation also discovered that cloud-features on Uranus have a lot in common with those on Neptune, although the weather on Uranus is much calmer.