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chaotic-venus-vortices
A long-lasting megastorm in the atmosphere above Venus’ south pole is more chaotic and unpredictable than previously thought. This is the finding of a new study that looked at the planet's polar atmosphere in greater detail than ever before, which was published Mar. 24 in Nature Geoscience.
Venus has a dense carbon-dioxide atmosphere that creates a surface pressure more than 90 times stronger than Earth’s at sea level and temperatures greater than 450 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead. Though the planet rotates very slowly — a day on Venus lasts 243 Earth-days — its atmosphere travels at speeds of 360 km/hr, whipping around the planet in just four Earth-days. Satellites have spotted an S-shaped vortex with two eyes near each of its poles.
A polar vortex is a gigantic persistent cyclone-like storm hovering high in the atmosphere over a planet’s antipodes. Almost every planet or moon with a substantial atmosphere has been shown capable of possessing one, including Earth. They interact with and shape the long-term climatological patterns of an atmosphere and, at least on our own world, are important in modeling climate change and ozone depletion.
Considering that Venus is not the only world with some crazy atmospheric dynamics, here we take a look at the solar system’s most incredible polar vortices.
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