{"id":148772,"date":"2025-11-19T19:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/148772\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T19:03:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:03:13","slug":"scientists-may-have-finally-uncovered-what-drives-venuss-insane-220-mph-winds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/148772\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists May Have Finally Uncovered What Drives Venus\u2019s Insane 220-mph Winds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" <\/a>Clouds on Venus race across the sky at speeds of more than 100 meters per second, driven by incompletely understood atmospheric dynamics. Credit:\u00a0Kevin M. Gill<\/a>,\u00a0CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine the catastrophic winds of a Category 5 hurricane. Now, imagine even faster winds of more than 100 meters per second, encircling the planet and whipping clouds across the sky, with no end in sight. This scenario would be astonishing on Earth, but it\u2019s business as usual on Venus, where the atmosphere at cloud level rotates about\u00a060 times faster<\/a>\u00a0than the planet itself\u2014a phenomenon known as superrotation. In contrast, Earth\u2019s cloud-level atmosphere rotates at about the same speed as the planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

Prior research has explored the mechanisms driving atmospheric superrotation on Venus, but the details remain murky. New evidence from\u00a0Lai et al.<\/a>\u00a0suggests that a once-daily atmospheric tidal cycle, fueled by heat from the Sun, contributes much more to the planet\u2019s extreme winds than previously thought.<\/p>\n

Rapid atmospheric rotation often occurs on rocky planets that, like Venus, are located relatively close to their stars and rotate very slowly. On Venus, one full rotation takes 243 Earth days. Meanwhile, the atmosphere races around the planet in a mere 4 Earth days.<\/p>\n

To better understand this superrotation, the researchers analyzed data collected between 2006 and 2022 by the European Space Agency\u2019s\u00a0Venus Express<\/a>\u00a0satellite and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency\u2019s\u00a0Akatsuki<\/a>\u00a0satellite, which both studied Venus\u2019s atmosphere by detecting how it\u00a0bends radio waves<\/a>. The research team also simulated superrotation using a\u00a0numerical model of Venus\u2019s atmosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The analysis focused specifically on thermal tides\u2014one of several atmospheric processes, alongside\u00a0meridional circulation<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0planetary waves<\/a>, whose interactions have previously been shown to sustain Venus\u2019s superrotation by transporting momentum. Thermal tides are patterns of air movement that occur when sunlight heats air on the dayside of a planet.\u00a0Venusian thermal tides<\/a>\u00a0can be broken into two major components: diurnal tides, which follow a cyclical pattern repeating once per Venusian day, and semidiurnal tides, which have two cycles per day.<\/p>\n

Earlier research suggested that semidiurnal tides are the main thermal tide component involved in superrotation. However, this study\u2014which includes the first analysis of thermal tides in Venus\u2019s southern hemisphere\u2014found that diurnal tides play a primary role in transporting momentum toward the tops of Venus\u2019s thick clouds, suggesting diurnal tides are major contributors to the rapid winds.<\/p>\n

Though the researchers note that further clarification of the contributions of diurnal tides is needed, the work sheds new light on Venus\u2019s extreme winds and could aid meteorological research on other slowly rotating planets. <\/p>\n

The findings appeared in AGU Advances<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on EOS Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clouds on Venus race across the sky at speeds of more than 100 meters per second, driven by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82,3625,84547],"class_list":["post-148772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-venus","tag-winds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}