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Neptune’s atmospheric temperature is on an unexpected roller-coaster ride, and it could take decades for scientists to piece together what’s happening at the distant planet.
The ice giant’s global temperature dropped about 8 degrees Celsius between 2003 and 2012 at the start of Neptune’s summer, researchers report April 11 in Planetary Sciences Journal. Then from 2018 to 2020, thermal images show that the planet’s south pole brightened dramatically, indicating a spike of 11 degrees C (SN: 10/2/07).
Naomi Rowe-Gurney, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues looked at 17 years of mid-infrared data from ground-based telescopes and the no-longer-functioning Spitzer Space Telescope (SN: 7/18/18; SN: 1/28/20). The researchers used infrared light to pierce Neptune’s top cloud layer and peer at its stratosphere, where the planet’s atmospheric chemistry comes into view.
Each Neptune year lasts 165 Earth years, so the time period analyzed — from 2003 to 2020 — is essentially equivalent to five weeks on Earth. The wildest temperature shift occurred from 2018 to 2020, when the atmospheric temperature at Neptune’s south pole rose from –121° C to –110° C.
Temperature swings
These mid-infrared images from the Very Large Telescope in Cerro Paranal, Chile, and the Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, show thermal snapshots of Neptune from 2006 to 2020. The map dims after 2006 (top left), showing a global cooling. But between 2018 and 2020, Neptune’s south pole lit up, indicating it warmed by 11 degrees Celsius by 2020 (bottom right).
“We weren’t expecting any seasonal changes to happen in this short time period, because we’re not even seeing a full season,” says Rowe-Gurney. “It’s all very strange and interesting.”
The researchers don’t yet know what’s causing the temperature changes. The sun’s ultraviolet rays break up methane molecules in the stratosphere, so that chemistry or even the sun’s activity cycle could be a trigger. Nailing down specifics requires more observations. “We need to keep observing over the next 20 years to see a full season and see if something else changes,” says Rowe-Gurney.