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JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH,
VOL. 112,
E04S08,
9 PP., 2007
doi:10.1029/2006JE002804
Effects of topography on the spin-up of a Venus atmospheric model
Comparative Planetology Laboratory, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
Comparative Planetology Laboratory, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
We study how topography affects the spin-up from rest of a model of the atmosphere of Venus. The simulations are performed with the EPIC model using its isentropic, terrain-following hybrid vertical coordinate, and are forced with the Newtonian-cooling profile used to achieve superrotation in a Venus model with no topography by Lee et al. (2005). We are able to reproduce their results with our model, which was developed independently and uses a different vertical coordinate. Both groups use a horizontal resolution of 5°, which is dictated by the need for reasonable computer runtime and is not a claim of numerical convergence. We find that the addition of topography substantially changes both the evolution and end state of the model's spin-up: the magnitude of the superrotation is diminished from 55 ms−1 to 35 ms−1, and it reaches steady state faster, in a few years instead of a few decades. A large, stationary eddy associated with Ishtar Terra forms that has a local horizontal temperature anomaly of order 2 K at the 0.7 bar level; such a feature may be observable in high-resolution infrared images.
Received 1 August 2006; accepted 25 October 2006; published 11 April 2007.
Citation: (2007), Effects of topography on the spin-up of a Venus atmospheric model, J. Geophys. Res., 112, E04S08, doi:10.1029/2006JE002804.
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