Comparison of the responses of the atmosphere of Earth, Venus, Mars and Jupiter to heat sources and perturbations

Abstract

The different characteristics of the structure and dynamics of the terrestial, the cytherean, the martian and the jovian atmospheres have been analysed. Our analyses with one-dimensional and three-dimensional models show the thermal structure of the martian and jovian atmosphere to be similar to that of the terrestrial atmosphere. For these three atmospheres the dimensionless parameter of thermal structure α is of the order 1, which is in contrast to the small α (5 × 10⁻²) for the cytherean atmosphere.