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| Titel |
Venus winds at cloud level from VIRTIS during the Venus Express mission |
| VerfasserIn |
Ricardo Hueso, Javier Peralta, Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, Santiago Pérez-Hoyos, Giuseppe Piccioni, Pierre Drossart |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250035264
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The Venus Express (VEX) mission has been in orbit to Venus for almost four years now. The
VIRTIS instrument onboard VEX observes Venus in two channels (visible and infrared)
obtaining spectra and multi-wavelength images of the planet. Images in the ultraviolet range
are used to study the upper cloud at 66 km while images in the infrared (1.74 μm) map the
opacity of the lower cloud deck at 48 km. Here we present our latest results on the analysis of
the global atmospheric dynamics at these cloud levels using a large selection over the full
VIRTIS dataset. We will show the atmospheric zonal superrotation at these levels and the
mean meridional motions. The zonal winds are very stable in the lower cloud at
mid-latitudes to the tropics while it shows different signatures of variability in the
upper cloud where solar tide effects are manifest in the data. While the upper clouds
present a net meridional motion consistent with the upper branch of a Hadley cell the
lower cloud present almost null global meridional motions at all latitudes but with
particular features traveling both northwards and southwards in a turbulent manner
depending on the cloud morphology on the observations. A particular important
atmospheric feature is the South Polar vortex which might be influencing the structure
of the zonal winds in the lower cloud at latitudes from the vortex location up to
55ºS.
Acknowledgements This work has been funded by the Spanish MICIIN AYA2009-10701
with FEDER support and Grupos Gobierno Vasco IT-464-07. |
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