Upper atmospheric heating on Jupiter by polar aurora

Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, particularly in the lower latitudes, is warmer than expected from solar heating. For many years, it has been presumed that the redistribution of energy deposited in the polar regions by aurora was the explanation, yet circulation models found that the energy was trapped and unable to propagate to lower latitudes, so other models have been considered. Previous observations did not have sufficient resolution to resolve this issue. James O’Donoghue et al. report observations with sufficient resolution to track the energy flow and indeed find that energy from the poles is transported to lower latitudes.