Superrotation recipes

Equatorial superrotation can occur under variety of conditions in planetary atmospheres. It occurs on slowly rotating planets (e.g., Venus), on strongly convecting and rapidly rotating giant planets (e.g., Jupiter and Saturn), and on sufficiently warm terrestrial planets. In general, for superrotation to occur, there must be preferential wave activity generation near the equator, and the wave activity so generated must dissipate away from the equator. The associated eddy angular momentum transport toward the equator must exceed any eddy angular momentum transport away from the equator, and dissipation must be sufficiently weak. This talk establishes general criteria when these conditions are met and, therefore, when superrotation can occur over a wide range of possible geophysical flow parameters.