Abstract The evolution of a large-amplitude disturbance at cloud level in Jupiter's 24° N jet stream in 1990 is used to constrain the vertical structure of a realistic atmospheric model down to the 6 bar pressure level. We use the EPIC model (Dowling et al., 1998, The explicit planetary isentropic-coordinate (EPIC) atmospheric model, Icarus 132, 221–238) to perform long-term, three-dimensional, nonlinear simulations with a series of systematic variations in vertical structure and find that the details of the 1990 disturbance combine with the characteristics of the 24° N jet, the fastest on Jupiter, to yield a tight constraint on the solution space. The most important free parameters are the vertical dependence of the zonal-wind profile, and the thermal structure, below the cloud tops ( p > 0.7 bar ) at the jet's central latitude. The temporal evolution of the disturbed cloud patterns, which spans more than 2 years, can be reproduced if the jet peak reaches ∼180 ms−1 at the cloud level and increases to ∼210 ms−1 at 1 bar and up to ∼240 ms−1 at 6 bar; the observations were not reproduced for other configurations investigated. This trend is consistent with that measured by the Galileo Probe at 7° N; the implication is that this jovian jet extends well below the solar radiation penetration level situated near the 2 bar level.