Jupiter's bands

[Gareth56]

Despite Jupiter rotating very quickly in one direction what causes the alternating counter rotating bands of clouds, because if Jupiter is rotating so fast wouldn't all the cloud bands rotate in the same direction?

 

Thanks

[Greg H.]

Jupiter Atmosphere Dynamics on Wiki

 

In brief, as of 2008 (when I assume this article was first written) no one really had a good idea of how Jupiter's atmosphere works to produce the effects we see when we observe it. The article linked covers a few of the hypotheses (specifically in the section I linked to directly), and it also goes into more detail about what scientists do know about the atmosphere. I'm not sure if anything has changed in regards to what we know about Jupiter since then, but hopefully one of our more knowledgeable members can tell us.