Teleconvection: Remotely driven thermal convection in rotating stratified spherical layers

We report the discovery of a convective phenomenon found to occur in a rota ting spherical system in which an inner convectively unstable fluid layer i s bounded by a corotating outer convectively stable fluid layer. Although c onvection is thermally driven in the unstable interior, the resulting conve ctive motions concentrate primarily in the stable outer region. This phenom enon, which we term teleconvection, suggests that fluid motions observed at the "surface" of a planet (such as Jupiter's alternating zonal winds) may be driven by an energy source located deep inside the planet.