IA/U.Lisboa Seminar - The atmosphere of Venus simulated by a general circulation model - 13 dezembro 2016

IA

 

 

Recent observations by instruments on board the satellite Venus Express (2006-2014) and on-going ground-based campaigns are improving considerably the knowledge of our neighbour planet Venus. At the same time those new measurements put in evidence the complexity and the high variability of the Venus atmosphere, opening new scientific questions (e.g. how does the interplay of planetary and small-scale waves control the circulation features? which processes control the transition region (70-120 km) between the retrograde superrotating zonal flow and the day-to-night circulation?is the polar vortex a permanent feature of the Venus atmosphere?) Sophisticated theoretical tools such as General Circulation Models (GCM) are essential to explore specific physical processes, to interpret the measurements and to help building a consistent picture of spatial and temporal evolution of Venus atmosphere. In this talk I will present a selection of results obtained with a self-consistent ground-to-thermosphere GCM developed at the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique in Paris, France, with a particular focus on the upper atmosphere of Venus (above 90 km), a region difficult to sound and particularly challenging to be fully explained by current GCMs.