Jupiter's Global Winds in Advance of the Juno Encounters

We use Hubble/WFC3 imaging observations in February 2016 to derive Jupiter's global wind field, the closest wind velocity measurement to Juno's focused atmospheric campaign (November 2016 through January 2017).Using the methods of Asay-Davis et al. (2011, Icarus 211, 1215), we derive zonal wind profiles from Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program data in 2015 and 2016, and from 2009 and 2012 data, all taken at red optical wavelengths with the WFC3/UVIS instrument. Several jets show significant variability in peakspeed over the 2000-2016 time period, while most jets are very stable.We quantify uncertainties in order to determine which changes are significant, and we find a roughly 2x improvement in precision compared to the HST/WFPC2 and Cassini-derived zonal wind profiles in Asay-Davis et al. (2011). Some improvement in precision is likely to be instrumental. The WFC3/UVIS detector better samples the HST point-spread function by about 15% compared to WFPC2, and the larger WFC3/UVIS field of view reduces navigational uncertainty by capturing the entire planetary disk in every image. It is not yet clear whether instrumental effects can explain the entire reduction in uncertainty, which could potentially include time-variable noise due to coherent features (waves, vortices) as well as turbulence. Global variability of this magnitude would be a surprise, since Asay-Davis et al. (2011) found the same level of velocity uncertainty (~11 m/s) in both Cassini data from 2000 and HST/WFPC2 data from 2008.We will generate spatial spectra of kinetic energy and cloud features (in multiple filters), using Fourier transforms of OPAL Jupier imaging data and 2D velocity fields. We will fit composite linear models (Barrado-Izagirre et al. 2009, Icarus 202, 181; Choi and Showman 2011, Icarus 216, 597) to the kinetic energy and cloud albedo spectra, comparing spectral indices to past observations and determining forcing scales.