Cat 10 & rising ...

Jupiter in visible light, as seen by Hubble on 19 May, 2017. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley)

Jove looks calm and majestic ... but under thermal infrared imaging, it's a whole different story.

Jupiter in thermal infrared light; bright regions are clear air where heat from inside the planet can leak out, while darker regions are where clouds block that heat. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) and team Acknowledgments: Mahdi Zamani

Jupiter is not here to screw around.

Concurrent observations of the solar system's mightiest planet by Hubble Space Telescope, the Gemini Observatory, and the Juno spacecraft show that Jupiter's thunderstorms are ridiculously huge, towering skyward for 80 kilometers or more, powered by heat from below and water in the atmosphere. That's five times taller than similar storm systems on Earth.

A diagram of convective storm clouds on Jupiter. Warm wet air rises and forms clouds, while cooler dry air sinks. Gemini, Hubble, and Juno observe this with different kinds of light to probe the 3D cloud structure. Credit: NASA, ESA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley), and A. James and M.W. Carruthers (STScI)

What they found sounds familiar: Dry cool air sinks, while warm air laden with water vapor rises and makes clouds. This is pretty much how convection works in a cumulonimbus cloud on Earth, too. However, while these thunderclouds on Earth reach heights of 15 km from their base or so, Jupiter's are 80 kilometers high. Yegads

Read the entire SiFi piece. Interesting to a fault. :)