Large-Scale Motion in the Venus Stratosphere
Open Access
- 1 March 1979
- journal article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
- Vol. 36 (3) , 377-389
- https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1979)036<0377:lsmitv>2.0.co;2
Abstract
To examine a postulate that the horizontal momentum exchanges in Venus' stratosphere are quasi-nondivergent, we investigate the properties of two-dimensional turbulence on a slowly rotating sphere in a high-resolution, one-level numerical model. We conclude that the forcing which maintains the stratospheric flow is weak and influences the dynamics far less than the inertial effects. Consequently, the behavior resembles that of vorticity-conserving, two-dimensional flows. On a slowly rotating planet like Venus, such flows are dominated by solid-body rotation and by a planetary wave of unit zonal wavenumber—this wave corresponds to the observed Y-shaped UV feature. Although these largest scales of motion stand out, the dynamic balances of the flow are fundamentally nonlinear, in contrast to the quasi-linear Rossby wave regime on rapidly rotating planets.Keywords
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