First direct measurements of the zonal winds in Saturn's stratosphere

Saturn's cloud-top zonal winds have been measured since the Voyager days. Contrary to Jupiter, the jets are mostly prograde and with a noticeable broad super-rotating jet between 35°S and 35°N with peak velocities reaching ~450 m/s between 10°S and 10°N (e.g. Sanchez-Lavega et al. 2000). The Cassini mission revealed, during its Grand Finale, that these winds extend as deep as 8000 km below the clouds (Galanti et al. 2019). Above the tropopause, in the stratosphere, there has been no direct determination of the zonal winds, although thermal wind balance calculations have shown the signature of Saturn's semi-annual oscillation (SAO) in the tropical zone (Fouchet et al. 2008, Guerlet et al. 2011, 2018). These derivations lack an initial condition, in terms of wind speeds, located in the sensitivity zone of the temperature measurements. It thus remains unknown if the SAO jets alternate in direction as a function of altitude. In addition, more and more sophisticated general circulation models are being developed to constrain the dynamics of Saturn's stratosphere (Friedson & Moses 2012, Spiga et al. 2020, Bardet et al. 2021). These models now crucially need observational constraints.

We used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to map Saturn's stratospheric zonal winds. We derive the zonal winds as a function of latitude from the Doppler shifts induced by the winds on the spatially and spectrally resolved spectral lines. In this paper, we will present and discuss our results.