ИСТИНА

According to measurements obtained in interplanetary missions and on the Hubble Space Telescope, the main outer part of the vortex of the Great Red Spot of Jupiter (JGRS) is anticyclonic, while its inner region is in cyclonic rotation. This allows us to consider the JGRS as a quasi-geostrophic formation composed of two vortices embedded into each other. Such a vortex structure with “embedding” can be called a composite vortex. Two variants of vortex formation are considered. 1. A stationary composite vortex composed of two ellipsoidal confocal vortices in a horizontal zonal barotropic flow with a constant shear. An exact solution of this nonlinear problem is obtained within the framework of a rotating stratified atmosphere in the approximation of a quasi-geostrophic f-plane. An important condition here is the stationarity of the shape of both vortices. In such an approach, for a given geometry of the vortices and shear of the background flow, the potential vorticities of both vortices are determined uniquely. The main vortex has the same sign of potential vorticity as the background flow. The embedded vortex has the opposite vorticity. The energy of the composite vortex exceeds the energy of a homogeneous stationary vortex without embedding. 2. A combination of a stationary external vortex and a non-stationary embedded vortex, provided that it weakly affects the behavior of the main vortex boundary. Both vortices have an ellipsoidal core shape and are affected by the same external flow as in the first case. The potential vorticity of the main vortex is calculated exactly, and the vorticity of the embedded vortex can be arbitrary. The internal vortex moves as a whole along elliptical orbits inside the main vortex. In this case, the deformations of its core change periodically with limited oscillation of the horizontal semi-axes. When the centers of the vortices coincide, the internal vortex, remaining in place, can rotate with limited deformation of its boundary. If the embedded vortex has a vorticity opposite to the main vortex, then the energy of the composite vortex is less than the energy of the homogeneous vortex without embedded vortex. The latter property indicates the energetic preference for the existence of composite eddies with non-stationary embedding that weakly affects the boundary of the main vortex.