Variable winds on Venus mapped in three dimensions

doi:doi:10.1029/2008GL033817

Abstract

A. Sánchez-Lavega

Escuela Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain

R. Hueso

Escuela Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain

G. Piccioni

Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica and Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, Rome, Italy

P. Drossart

Laboratoire d' Etudes Spatiales et d' Instrumentation en Astrophysique, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, Université Paris-Diderot, Meudon, France

J. Peralta

Escuela Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain

S. Pérez-Hoyos

Escuela Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain

C. F. Wilson

Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

F. W. Taylor

Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

K. H. Baines

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA

D. Luz

Laboratoire d' Etudes Spatiales et d' Instrumentation en Astrophysique, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, Université Paris-Diderot, Meudon, France

S. Erard

Laboratoire d' Etudes Spatiales et d' Instrumentation en Astrophysique, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, Université Paris-Diderot, Meudon, France

S. Lebonnois

Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL, CNRS/UPMC, Paris, France

We present zonal and meridional wind measurements at three altitude levels within the cloud layers of Venus from cloud tracking using images taken with the VIRTIS instrument on board Venus Express. At low latitudes, zonal winds in the Southern hemisphere are nearly constant with latitude with westward velocities of 105 ms⁻¹ at cloud-tops (altitude ∼ 66 km) and 60–70 ms⁻¹ at the cloud-base (altitude ∼ 47 km). At high latitudes, zonal wind speeds decrease linearly with latitude with no detectable vertical wind shear (values lower than 15 ms⁻¹), indicating the possibility of a vertically coherent vortex structure. Meridional winds at the cloud-tops are poleward with peak speed of 10 ms⁻¹ at 55° S but below the cloud tops and averaged over the South hemisphere are found to be smaller than 5 ms⁻¹. We also report the detection at subpolar latitudes of wind variability due to the solar tide.

Received 29 February 2008; accepted 2 June 2008; published 10 July 2008.

Citation: Sánchez-Lavega, A., et al. (2008), Variable winds on Venus mapped in three dimensions, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L13204, doi:10.1029/2008GL033817.

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