Venus: Cloud level circulation during 1982 as determined from pioneer cloud photopolarimeter images

The relationship between mesoscale circulation and cloud morphology at the upper cloud level of Venus from VMC/Venus Express

“…In this work we investigated the reasons why the mid-latitude jet is not always seen in wind profiles at the middle latitudes. The increase of the meridional velocity from zero at the equator to 10-15 m/s at 50-601 in both hemispheres has been noticed by Limaye et al (1988Limaye et al ( , 2007, Rossow et al (1990), as well as by Peralta et al (2007), Sánchez-Lavega et al (2008), Hueso et al (2012) and Khatuntsev et al (2013) in the southern hemisphere. The region, where the meridional velocity peaks at 501S between 13:00 and 15:00 local time (Khatuntsev et al, 2013), was the primary focus of this study.…”

“…The mid-latitude jet visible in zonal velocity profiles obtained by the manual method (Khatuntsev et al, 2013) is not always detectable by digital methods (Moissl et al, 2009). The bulk of data processed allowed us to confirm the variability of properties of the mid-latitude jet (Khatuntsev et al, 2013) causing differences in mean zonal velocities noticed by Rossow et al (1990) and Limaye et al (1988). In this work we investigated the reasons why the mid-latitude jet is not always seen in wind profiles at the middle latitudes.…”

Six years of Venus winds at the upper cloud level from UV, visible and near infrared observations from VIRTIS on Venus Express

“…Therefore, Venus cloud top is located in a narrow region of high vertical wind shear above a region of small wind shear. Limaye et al (1988) and Rossow et al (1990) used the wind field derived from the OCPP/Pioneer Venus UV imaging to calculate the horizontal divergence of the flow. Khatuntsev et al (2013) followed the same approach and calculated the horizontal divergence from the VMC latitude-longitude (local time) wind field.…”

“…Several radiative transfer analysis place the cloud tops at altitudes of 67-71 km at the equator with a nearly constant altitude until 45-501S and a drop of altitude poleward of 501S reaching about 61-63 km over both poles (Ignatiev et al, 2009;Lee et al, 2012;Haus et al, 2014). Detailed studies of the cloud top motions can be traced back to measurements obtained by Mariner 10 in 1974 , Pioneer Venus in 1979-1985(Rossow et al, 1980Limaye and Suomi, 1981;Limaye et al, 1982Limaye et al, , 1988Limaye, 2007) and Galileo in 1990(Belton et al, 1991Toigo et al, 1994;Peralta et al, 2007;Kouyama et al, 2012). These works analyzed ultraviolet images of the planet upper clouds at 66-71 km altitude which show high contrast features.…”

Decadal variations in a Venus general circulation model

“…5, for the time interval from year 164 to 175. This can be compared with time variations of the zonal winds at cloud top heights at the equator from measurements by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter Cloud Photopolarimeter instrument (OCPP) (Limaye et al, 1988;Rossow et al, 1990), as given in Del Genio and . In Fig.…”