Could there be an upside down hurricane on a gaseous super-Earth

I wrote a novel based on a human civilization that lives floating cities and dirigibles on a small, atmosphere-abundant super-Earth with a liquid water core (there's a smaller solid core under that, but it's not important).

In this story, the largest floating city looks something like a giant ceiling fan, with a central "city" suspended in the eye of a giant hurricane on seven kilometer-long rotors which generate lift from rising hot air coming from deep inside the planet.

Now that I am going back to edit this novel, I realize there is a problem wit this: in the eye of a hurricane or typhoon on Earth, air is actually cold and traveling down due to the fluid dynamics of how hurricanes are generated and work. Hot air rises all around the eye, contacting the cold layer above it and precipitating the stormwall as it goes. Thus my city really needs a hurricane flipped on its head, so to speak, so that hot air is rapidly rising through a tight eye-like hole, breaking through some kind of large cold upper layer.

My planet has Earth-like temperature, atmospheric composition, pressure, and gravity about halfway down in its atmosphere, where the people live. Above this is a large, sparse layer of helium and hydrogen. Below it is a large, very dense layer of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lesser amounts of other dense gases and vaporized particulates. Below that the world-ocean's surface is subject to rampant greenhouse-gas effects, its temperature perpetually on average being near boiling.

Is there a way to explain a flipped hurricane type of storm system on my planet?

posted almost 8 years ago

Adam Wykes‭

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