The Superrotation of Venus: Where's the Torque?

Clifford Chafin

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arXiv · 1406.0116

The Superrotation of Venus: Where's the Torque?

Clifford Chafin

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Abstract

The superrotation of the atmosphere of Venus requires a large torque on the up- per atmosphere. Mechanisms for providing a net balancing of this through waves or ionospheric motions to other parts of the atmosphere have been proposed but all have difficulties. Here we demonstrate that the albedo gradient from the day to night side of the cloud layer allows a gradient of light pressure that is sufficient to provide an external torque to drive this flow.

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Clifford Chafin. 2014-05-31. The Superrotation of Venus: Where's the Torque?. https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0116

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