{"id":225495,"date":"2025-11-20T01:29:58","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T07:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/key-driver-of-extreme-winds-on-venus-identified"},"modified":"2025-11-20T01:29:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T07:29:58","slug":"key-driver-of-extreme-winds-on-venus-identified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/key-driver-of-extreme-winds-on-venus-identified","title":{"rendered":"Key driver of extreme winds on Venus identified"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/key-driver-of-extreme-winds-on-venus-identified2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Imagine the catastrophic winds of a category 5 hurricane. Now, imagine even faster winds of more than 100 meters per second, encircling the planet and whipping clouds across the sky, with no end in sight. This scenario would be astonishing on Earth, but it\u2019s business as usual on Venus, where the atmosphere at cloud level rotates about <a href=\"https:\/\/eos.org\/research-spotlights\/new-atmospheric-wave-may-shape-venuss-clouds\" target=\"_blank\">60 times faster<\/a> than the planet itself\u2014a phenomenon known as superrotation. In contrast, Earth\u2019s cloud-level atmosphere rotates at about the same speed as the planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n<p>Prior research has explored the mechanisms driving atmospheric superrotation on Venus, but the details remain murky. New evidence from Lai and team suggests that a once-daily atmospheric tidal cycle, fueled by heat from the sun, contributes much more to the planet\u2019s extreme winds than previously thought. The study is <a href=\"https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1029\/2025AV001880\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal AGU Advances.<\/p>\n<p>Rapid atmospheric rotation often occurs on rocky planets that, like Venus, are located relatively close to their stars and rotate very slowly. On Venus, one full rotation takes 243 Earth days. Meanwhile, the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/atmosphere\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">atmosphere<\/a> races around the planet in a mere 4 Earth days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine the catastrophic winds of a category 5 hurricane. Now, imagine even faster winds of more than 100 meters per second, encircling the planet and whipping clouds across the sky, with no end in sight. This scenario would be astonishing on Earth, but it\u2019s business as usual on Venus, where the atmosphere at cloud level [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,493,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-climatology","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}