Jupiter's Great Red Spot as a shallow water system

Voyager cloud-top velocity data for Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) is used to derive the bottom topography up to a constant that depends on the unknown radius of deformation. The bottom topography is inferred from the Bernoulli streamfunction, kinetic energy per unit mass, and absolute vorticity values derived from the velocity data. The results are used to calculate potential vorticity versus latitude far from the vortex. It is found that the deep atmosphere is in differential motion and that the far-field potential vorticity gradient changes sign at several latitudes. Numerical experiments are conducted to study the time-dependent behavior of the shallow water analog of Jupiter's analog.