The newly discovered hot cyclonic spot on Saturn's north pole appears to be related to Saturn's dynamic weather systems, rather than to seasonal changes in the amount of sunlight at the pole, NASA said Tuesday in a release.

The agency said scientists already knew about the hot spot at Saturn's south pole from previous observations by the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii but the north pole vortex was a surprise.

The findings are published in the journal Science.

"The hot spots are the result of air moving polewards, being compressed and heated up as it descends over the poles into the depths of Saturn," lead author Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist from the University of Oxford. "The driving forces behind the motion, and indeed the global motion of Saturn's atmosphere, still need to be understood."