I read that part in the article but somehow every other article that I have read gives me an impression that temperature on venus is high.
How Hot is Venus?
I'm confused now.
ladg!!
Temperature on the surface of Venus is high, very high, but the cloud 30-40 Miles above the surface of Venus is not as harsh, and very "earth like".
Although Venus and Earth are similar in size, someone standing on the ground on Venus would experience air about 90 times heavier than Earth's atmosphere; pressures are similar to diving 3,000 feet beneath the ocean. Ironically, the most Earth-like atmosphere in the solar system occurs 30 to 40 miles (50 to 60 kilometers) above the surface of Venus. Both oxygen and hydrogen rise above the heavier gas layer covering the ground, and the pressures are similar to our planet.
Venus' Atmosphere: Composition, Climate and Weather
- Carbon dioxide: 96 percent
- Nitrogen: 3.5 percent
- Carbon monoxide, argon, sulfur dioxide, and water vapor: less than 1 percent
A set of images of the Venus south polar vortex in infrared light (at 3.8 microns) acquired by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer instrument on ESA's Venus Express spacecraft. The images show the temperature of the cloud tops at about 65 km (40.4 miles) altitude.
A darker region corresponds to higher temperature and thus lower altitude. The center of the vortex, at a temperature of about 250K (around minus 9.7 degrees Fahrenheit), is the deepest zone, exhibiting the highest temperature. Credit: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA
However, higher up, the weather gets more interesting, according to a new study of old data by NASA and international scientists. The team detected strange things going on in data from telescopic observations of Venus in infrared light at about 68 miles (110 kilometers) above the planet's surface, in cold, clear air above the acid clouds, in two layers called the mesosphere and the thermosphere.
"Although the air over the polar regions in these upper atmospheric layers on Venus was colder than the air over the equator in most measurements, occasionally it appeared to be warmer," said Dr. Theodor Kostiuk of NASA Goddard.
"In Earth's atmosphere, a circulation pattern called a 'Hadley cell' occurs when warm air rises over the equator and flows toward the poles, where it cools and sinks. Since the atmosphere is denser closer to the surface, the descending air gets compressed and warms the upper atmosphere over Earth's poles. We saw the opposite on Venus. In addition, although the surface temperature is fairly even, we've seen substantial changes – up to 54 degrees Fahrenheit (about 30 K change) – within a few Earth days in the mesosphere – thermosphere layers over low latitudes on Venus. The poles appeared to be more stable, but we still saw changes up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 K change)."
The Acid Clouds of Venus --"New Discoveries Provide Clues to Evolution of Earth's Atmosphere"