Forced Dissipative QG Simulation of Jupiter's Great Red Spot with Discrete Exterior Calculus

The giant vortex, Jupiter's great red spot (GRS) persists for over three hundred years, and is a research topic of interest for fluid dynamists apart from astrophysicists. Simulating GRS can shed some light on its existence and longevity. Previous work by (Marcus, P. S., & Lee, C. 1994) on the GRS, assumed a forced dissipative quasi-geostrophic flow limited to the beta-plane. Presently we consider the entire spherical geometry. We employ discrete exterior calculus (DEC) for the simulation. DEC retains at the discrete level many of the identities of its continuous counterpart (exterior calculus). It has superior conservation properties for the discretization of the physical problems. DEC is known for its structure preserving properties, and is an appropriate choice for investigating flows dominated by long-lived coherent structures such as GRS. We elucidate on the salient features of the GRS such as its shape, internal distribution of vorticity, and sign of rotation with respect to the shear of the surrounding zonal wind.