P22     Moist convection on Jupiter simulated by a new global circulation model – PlanetMPAS.

Lian, Yuan, Mark I. Richardson, Aeolis Research, and Adam P. Showman, The University of Arizona

Convective storms on Jupiter and Saturn are ubiquitous features across the globe. These storms have sizes ranging from a few hundred kilometers to several thousand kilometers, and they are commonly recognized as a result of water moist convection due to large amount of latent heating associated with the water cycle. Here we developed a new global circulation model (GCM) for Jupiter and Saturn based on MPAS. The Jupiter MPAS and Saturn MPAS (as part of the planetMPAS suite) share several physics parameterizations, which include a turbulent mixing scheme that mixes vapor, heat, and momentum below cloud deck, a mass-flux-based moist convection scheme in the cloud layer, a simple microphysics scheme that represents the phase transition of water and conversion of cloud water/ice to rain/snow, and a Newtonian heating/cooling scheme (or radiative transfer scheme in a grey atmosphere) that mimics the solar radiation. In these two GCMs, convection on sub-grid scales are parameterized while those on grid scales are resolved by the dynamical core. Here we present our preliminary results that show the cloud dynamics and the interactions between moist convection and large-scale dynamics on Jupiter and Saturn.