(ORDO NEWS) — Despite the fact that Venus is close to the Earth and has approximately the same size as it, completely different conditions are maintained on this planet – acidic clouds and a surface temperature of about 460 degrees Celsius.
This temperature is due to the powerful greenhouse effect of the planet’s atmosphere, which consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide.
70 kilometers above, a constant storm rages, which is the result of the so-called “super rotation” of Venus. In a new paper, a team of researchers tried to find a connection between these “infernal” features of Venus.
In this study, a team led by Pedro Machado of the University of Lisbon, Portugal, presents the most detailed and complete set of wind speed measurements on Venus in a direction parallel to the equator (zonal wind) and at the height of the cloud base.
One of the new results was the joint measurement of wind speed at two different heights with a difference of 20 kilometers.
The team recorded a difference in wind speeds of about 150 kilometers – with wind speeds increasing with altitude.
These results support the hypothesis of energy transfer from the heated lower layers of the planet’s gaseous envelope to the overlying layers, thus transferring it into the general atmospheric circulation.
Machado’s team was able to determine the speed of the Venusian winds by studying the movement of clouds visible in infrared observations on the night side of Venus.
This speed was about 216 kilometers per hour at the bottom of the cloud layer at mid-latitudes, while it fell by almost half when moving from the equator to the poles, the authors noted.
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