Venus' Polar Vortex Is Surprisingly Wild

List members , a lot of rubbish is said about how the Polar vortexes on Earth are caused by manmade climate change . The fact is that ANY planet that has an atmosphere will exhibit Polar vortexes . Therefore , Polar vortexes are an intrinsic property of planets which have an atmosphere .

Secondly , the energy source fuelling such Polar vortexes comes from the planet's interior , via the Polar openings , thus it has no correlation to climate on the planet's surface . Rather , because Polar vortexes exist , they have a cascading effect on climate for rest of the planet's surface !

The below article is about the "wild" Polar vortexes on Venus (a world quite similar to Earth) which obviously have nothing to do with "manmade climate change" :))

Venus' Polar Vortex Is Surprisingly Wild

The long-sought double hurricane at Venus' south pole has disappeared. New images from ESA's Venus Express spacecraft show that the so-called polar vortex, which was thought to swirl steadily around the planet's poles at all times, is actually a chaotic maelstrom.

A gigantic hurricane with two calm, dark eyes was discovered at Venus' north pole by the Pioneer Venus spacecraft in 1979. This double-eyed feature, dubbed the "dipole of Venus," was thought to form when warm air from the planet's equator rose and traveled toward the pole, where it cooled and sank to form a deep, swirling atmospheric pit.

For decades, astronomers expected to find a similar vortex at Venus' south pole. While Venus itself rotates slowly, just once every 117 Earth days, its atmosphere whips around the planet once every four Earth days. This "super-rotating" atmosphere ought to form massive storms at both poles, astronomers reasoned.

So when Venus Express saw what looked like a double vortex at the south pole shortly after arriving at Venus in April 2006, scientists took it as confirmation that these whorls were stable and permanent. But as they watched, the vortices shifted and morphed.

"We had ironically observed it in a dipole configuration right at the beginning of the mission," said astronomer Giuseppe Piccioni of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. "But we soon discovered that this was just a coincidence, since the dipole in reality is not a stable feature on Venus but just one shape among others." Piccioni presented his results at the European Planetary Science Congress in Rome on Sept. 23.

Data from the Virtis (Visible and InfraRed Thermal Imaging Spectrometer) instrument on Venus Express also showed that the dynamics at Venus' poles are quite different from the rest of the planet. Near the equator, the wind speeds vary greatly with altitude, with wind speeds doubling from the lower clouds to the cloud tops, Piccioni said. By contrast, the 1,800-mile-wide polar vortex rotates almost like a solid body. These two zones of rotation are separated by a ring of cold air called a "cold collar" surrounding the polar region.

Images: 1) 3-D perspective views of Venus' south polar vortex as it is now (left) and as it was when it displayed the dipole configuration (right). The y-axis plots the temperature of the clouds' top correlated with altitude. 2) Four views of the south polar vortex as recorded by Virtis. Credit: ESA/Virtis/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA

Regards

Folks , please focus on the above paragraph about Venus , just read it a few times...is it not clear that the "cold collar" zone (separating Polar regions from the rest of the surface) at a lower latitude than the Poles , is ALWAYS COLDER than the Polar region of Venus ???

It's like saying that the places located on the Arctic circle on Earth , for example (at 66.5 degree North) , are always colder than the Pole itself at 90 degree North !! Also please bear in mind , there is no "manmade Global warming" on Venus heating up it's Polar regions . So what does that tell us - need we say further ? I rest my case :))

Regards

Sidhartha,

Great logic!

Our northern winters ocurr when the southern hemisphere gets hit more directly by the rays of The Sun. The southern region of the cavity must heat up more, and warmer air, being more active, must push against the cooler air in the northern cavity and induce a stronger northern exhaust, so to speak. This is turn, warms the higher latitudes near the opening, and pushes the cold air of the Arctic down upon us, causing the winter season.

The NASA and astronomical people who write these things must not be so aware of the hollow earth logic, and don't realize the importance of the information that they are giving out.

It's like having a ripped seam in the bottom of your pants, and then you go walking down the street not realizing it. How embarrasing!

Dean

Yes @deandddd , two more telling comments from the same paragraph , worth noting :-

  1. "The dynamics at Venus's poles are quite different from the rest of the planet" (guess why ??)

  2. "By contrast , the 1800 mile-wide polar vortex rotates almost like a solid body" (as though it's a permanent/perennial feature ?? Why is it like this only at the Poles ??)

Regards

On a different note , Venus is the planet most similar to Earth and has even been described as Earth's twin . It's the planet closest to our world , in the "neighbourhood of Earth" . It also is a hard and "rocky" world , similar to ours.

So , for those who find it difficult to relate with Polar phenomena on Jupiter , Saturn and correlate it back to Earth - because they are gaseous planets , too far away etc. , you can study Venus and compare it to Earth !

Also , the fact that like Earth , Venus too has a prominent atmosphere (unlike Mars) , makes it a very good candidate for our research on Hollow planets .

Regards

Folks , Titan too has a similar Polar vortex to Venus - from my other post !

Regards

Folks , JAXA - a Japanese space agency has recently discovered that a gigantic planet wide tsunami has been sweeping across Venus since at least 1983...the speed of this Global Atmospheric "Tide" (Venus has no liquid ocean on it's surface) is 328 km/hour . Such a phenomenon has NEVER yet been observed on any other planet and nobody has been able to explain why it's happening :))

Regards