Is Jupiter's Red Spot on its way out? | COSMOS magazine

The shrinking of the spot tells us about the energy balance in the surrounding atmosphere, said Asay-Davis. The amount of energy leaving the Red Spot is not being balanced by the energy the storm is gaining, he said.

What has brought this about, though, is not yet known. "My suspicion is that the spot may undergo periods where it grows, and periods where it shrinks, but this is not well understood and we have never seen the Great Red Spot growing," said Davis.

Warrick Couch, President of the Astronomical Society of Australia and an astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology, in Melbourne, said the research was significant.

"The fact that we see gross changes in Jupiter's weather over time is of much interest, given the prominence of the current debate over climate change on Earth," he said.