From time-to-time, one has the opportunity to assist in developing a research tool with the versatility of a Swiss Army Knife (or sonic screwdriver for the Dr. Who aficionados). I was lucky enough to have that opportunity while working on my postdoc at the University of Louisville Comparative Planetology Laboratory (CPL) http://louisville.edu/cpl/ established and lead by Prof. Timothy Dowling in 2000. The primary goal of CPL is to develop theoretical and numerical models that may be used to gain a better understanding of how a given planetary atmosphere behaves in comparison with similar or quite different planetary kin.

Early astronomers first noted changes in appearance of planets such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as well as their larger moons. As the optical resolution of their instruments increased, they were able to deduce that these planetary bodies were in fact enshrouded by gaseous envelopes with features not dissimilar to those noted in Earth atmosphere including belts, zones, and vortices. With the advent of planetary probe programs such as Mariner, Venera, Magellan, Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini, enough remotely sensed and in-situ data was collected from most of the planets and larger moons such as Titan to ascertain that large variations exist from one planet to the next including large-scale flows analogous to jet streams found in Earth's atmosphere to the size, duration, rotational direction and rotational speed of vortices. However, despite these difference, hydrostatic primitive equations can be used to model large-scale flows. With sufficient flexibility allowed in the forcing terms that drive the conservation of momentum, thermal energy, and continuity equations, it should be possible to develop a single model that may be adapted to conditions specific a given planetary system without investing the time and computational resources in developing specialized models with applicability to just a single planetary atmosphere.