The water abundance in Jupiter’s equatorial zone

Abstract

Oxygen is the most common element after hydrogen and helium in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and may have been the primary condensable (as water ice) in the protoplanetary disk. Prior to the Juno mission, in situ measurements of Jupiter’s water abundance were obtained from the Galileo probe, which dropped into a meteorologically anomalous site. The findings of the Galileo probe were inconclusive because the concentration of water was still increasing when the probe ceased sending data. Here we report on the water abundance in the equatorial region (0 to 4 degrees north latitude), based on data taken at 1.25 to 22 GHz from the Juno microwave radiometer, probing pressures of approximately 0.7 to 30 bar. Because Juno discovered the deep atmosphere to be surprisingly variable as a function of latitude, it remains to confirm whether the equatorial abundance represents Jupiter’s global water abundance. The water abundance at the equatorial region is inferred to be 2.5^(+2.2)_(−1.6) ppm, or 2.7^(+2.4_(−1.7) times the elemental ratio of protosolar oxygen to hydrogen (1σ uncertainties). If this reflects the global water abundance, the result suggests that the planetesimals that formed Jupiter were unlikely to have been water-rich clathrate hydrates.