Planet Venus : Atmosphere and Weather - sciencenerds

Venus, a planet completely covered with clouds miles above the surface, the winds are whipping around in a ferocious pattern that basically carries the cod features around the entire planet every four days.

Venus surface

 Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth and it's heated from the Sun that drives the wind the circulation pattern of Venus's clouds is actually quite simple there's a warm side of Venus and a cold side and as the air warms up and rises on the dayside of Venus it spreads around to the night side so this discontinuous.

 current it's actually quite a lot simpler than the atmospheric circulation on earth, Venus's winds circulate faster than the fastest hurricane on earth but they look very similar to the Venus Express probe captured these remarkable images of the planets the South Pole.

 one of the great mysteries of Venus which actually had jaws dropping in the halls of many astronomy departments is the fact that we have hurricanes at the poles of Venus especially in the southern hemisphere that have two eyes, not one eye but two eyes now we've never seen this before in such a planetary scale Venus's double eyed for Texas, miles wide two hurricanes whirl around each other if you could descend into the vortex of Venus something I would love to do at least with a remote machine.

You would see some kind of an extraordinary wall of cloud and sort of twisting form spinning around you at ferocious speeds it would be quite a sight it's a mystery how deep this raging spinning vortex goes but maybe this mega-storm I descend to the planet's surface down here permanent Twilight bathes a volcanic landscape and the atmosphere colossal weight creates immense pressure

the atmospheric pressure on Venus is about a hundred times that of the earth think of taking a car squeezing it down to about a square inch and putting it one very square inch of your skin you would be flattened within a fraction of a second because of all that pressure boluses dense atmosphere creates one of the strangest Omega storms imaginable for miles per hour winds with the force of a hurricane.

 The wind's on the surface of Venus are actually very slow because Venus has a very slow rotation rate it takes Venus about  months to turn once around with respect to the Sun the crushing atmospheric pressure rams gas molecules together so tightly that they feel more like a liquid a gentle four mile an hour breeze packs of brutal punch it's like a hurricane in slow motion winds on Venus are totally unlike anything we see on the planet Earth you would almost feel like a molasses effect it'd be quite difficult to simply walk and run right through the wind Venus's surface is so hostile that life is impossible here but the upper atmospheres faster winds hold an extraordinary possibility I harbour this I don't know if I would call it a hypothesis or a scientific fantasy but I do think it's plausible that there could be some kind of life living in the clouds of Venus there are certainly energy sources there's sunlight and there are certain nutrients there's carbon there's hydrogen there's oxygen all the stuff we think of that you need to make life exists in the cause of Venus

 what would it see miles above the surface it hits a thick layer of cloud but this is no ordinary cloud it's made of vaporized acid corrosive enough to burn through steel scientists believe that the acid clouds are a by-product of Venus's violent history gigantic volcanic eruptions blasted billions of tons of sulfur high into the atmosphere there it mixed with water vapour to form concentrated sulfuric acid as the probe breaks through the upper atmosphere it slows to make a low pass over the surface the terrain is dominated by dormant volcanoes but our three miles into the atmosphere deep channels forged a million years ago by more lava stretched thousands of miles one longer even than the River Nile probe sensors reveal an atmospheric pressure times greater than on earth large enough to crush a car but the biggest problem is temperature.

 The atmosphere is nearly all carbon dioxide just like on earth, this gas acts like a pane of glass in a greenhouse letting the light through but not the heat out on earth increased carbon dioxide levels are causing small rises in temperature but on Venus, they have pushed the temperature to over degrees.

~sciencefreak