Figure 1: Globally averaged heating and cooling fluxes on Jupiter.

The heating (yellow branch) and cooling (cyan branch) fluxes are in units of W m⁻². The stratosphere is shaded. The heating flux is associated with the incoming solar radiation and the cooling flux is related to the outgoing thermal radiation. Of the 13.5 W m⁻² of solar radiation incident to Jupiter’s atmosphere, 0.1 W m⁻² is reflected back to space and 11.8 W m⁻² is transmitted to the troposphere. Tropospheric hazes and clouds absorbed 7.1 W m⁻² and 4.7 W m⁻² is reflected back to space². The remainder of the solar energy is absorbed in the middle atmosphere by fractal haze particles (0.7 W m⁻²) and CH₄ gas molecules (0.9 W m⁻²). The total outgoing thermal radiation from our radiative calculation is ∼13–14 W m⁻², consistent with that from Cassini and Voyager observations⁹. The thermal cooling flux is mainly emitted from the troposphere (12–13 W m⁻²). In the middle atmosphere, the net cooling flux is 1.4 W m⁻² emitted by gas molecules H₂, CH₄, C₂H₂, and C₂H₆ (black and white molecule diagrams). The upper limit of the outgoing thermal flux from the fractal aggregates (blue diagrams) is ∼0.2 W m⁻² as determined in this study.