Infrared Remote Sounding of the Middle Atmosphere of Venus from the Pioneer Orbiter

Creators: Taylor, F. W.; Diner, D. J.; Elson, L. S.; Hanner, M. S.; McCleese, D. J.; Martonchik, J. V.; Reichley, P. E.; Houghton, J. T.; Delderfield, J.; Schofield, J. T.; Bradley, S. E.; Ingersoll, A. P.

Abstract

Orbiter infrared measurements of the Venus atmosphere in the 60- to 140-kilometer region show very small diurnal temperature differences near the cloud tops, increasing somewhat at higher levels. The seasonal (that is, equator to pole) contrasts are an order of magnitude larger, and the temperatures unexpectedly increase with increasing latitude below 80 kilometers. An isothermal layer at least two scale heights in vertical extent is found near the 100-kilometer altitude, where the temperature is about 175 K. Structure is present in the cloud temperature maps on a range of spatial scales. The most striking is at high latitude, where contrasts of nearly 50 K are observed between a cold circumpolar band and the region near the pole itself.

Additional Information

© 1979 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received for publication 15 January 1979. Revision received 22 January 1979. The VORTEX investigator team thanks the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and others who delivered the instrumentation, particularly B. Locke, P. Forney, and T. Foster; F. Vescelus for brilliant task management; and the personnel at Ames Research Center who monitored the instrument development and assisted with its successful implementation, particularly A. Withelmi, E. Tischler, J. Sperrans, and S. Hing. This report represents one phase of research carried out by JPL under NASA contract NAS 7-100; D.J.D. is a NASA-NRC resident research associate.

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Infrared Remote Sounding of the Middle Atmosphere of Venus from the Pioneer Orbiter

Abstract

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