Jupiter's Great Red Spot shrunk took 350 years to shrink to one-third its original size

• The largest storm in the solar system has shrunk to two-thirds its original size.
• A new study predicts that even though it’s not any less thick, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is definitely much smaller than 350 years ago.
• Scientists will compare their modelled estimates to Juno’s observations to confirm the result.

The largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, is also home to the largest storm — an anti-cyclone dubbed the Great Red Spot. It was three times the size of our planet when it was first spotted 350 years ago. However, new research shows that it’s shrinking and it’s already down to the size of a single Earth.

The clouds that surround the spot are opaque, which makes it hard to peer into what’s really going on below the top layer. To overcome that obstacle, researchers with the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) started to build a model.

Using lab experiments, analysis and numerical simulations there were able to figure out the universal forces that kept the storm going. Their model — published in Nature Physics — shows that even though the storm is still just as intense as it was 350 years ago, it’s a lot smaller now.

The 350 years of the Great Red Spot
If you can imagine it, the planet itself is made up of liquids and gases. The clouds are a mix and match of jet stream creations, winds and vortices that look like parallel bands streaming through the sky. Within that haze, a little south of Jupiter’s equator, the Great Red Spot stands out on its own — and nobody really knows how it got its colour.

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The storm is probably a lot older than just 350 years but it was only spotted in for the first time in 1830 and extensive observations only began by 1879. Earth only got the first detailed view of the Great Red Spot a century later in 1979, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Voyager 1 spacecraft flew past the planet.

However, a lot is still unknown to date. The new study estimates that the Great Red Spot is around 170 kilometres thick — about the same as when the Voyager 1 made its fly-by. In order to confirm their results, the estimates of the model will be compared to Juno’s observations when they come in.

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