Jupiter's Great Red Spot has gotten smaller — but researchers say it's here to stay

Observations from the 1800s indicated that Jupiter’s spot was once more than four times the diameter of Earth.

But Marcus said changes in the dynamics of the storm’s clouds likely betray the strength of the underlying vortex.

Though the storm’s appearance has changed in the past decade, particularly in the movement of the spot’s clouds, the researchers found no evidence that the underlying vortex’s size or intensity has changed. The Great Red Spot is known as an anticyclone, because the storm’s winds swirl around a center of high atmospheric pressure that makes it rotate opposite to how hurricanes churn on Earth.

Gordon Bjoraker, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was not involved with the new research but agreed that it’s unlikely that Jupiter’s defining feature is facing any imminent threats.

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