Thesis

Atmospheric Gravity Waves: a key process in Mars and Venus atmospheres

• Call:

  PT-CERN Call 2020/2

• Academic Year:

  2020/2021

• Domain:

  Astroparticle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Pedro Machado

• Co-Supervisor:

  Gabriella Gilli

• Institution:

  FCUL (Universidade de Lisboa)

• Host Institution:

  IA - Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço

• Abstract:

  Recent observations by Venus Express (VEx) spacecraft [Svedhem+2007,Drossart+2007] and ground-based campaigns, allowed to carry out an unprecedented characterisation of winds [Machado+2014, 2017,Peralta+2017a] and atmospheric temperatures of Venus [Limaye+2017]. Those new measurements significantly improved our comprehension of Venus atmospheric circulation and achieved new valuable constraints in atmospheric dynamics of planets with superrotation. At the same time, they put in evidence the high variability of the Venus atmosphere, and they opened new scientific questions such as: what processes control the transition region (70-120 km) between the retrograde superrotating zonal flow and day-to-night circulation? How does the interplay of planetary and small-scale waves control the circulation features? We propose a systematic characterisation and classification of the waves apparent on Venus using remote sensing images from VEx and Akatsuki (Nakamura+2007) cameras. This systematic characterisation of atmospheric waves is of critical importance to constrain current sophisticated 3D models of terrestrial planet atmospheres [Gilli+2017].