EA46CH08_Read ARI 25 April 2018 12:36 Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences Superrotation on Venus, on Titan, and Elsewhere Peter L. Read1 and Sebastien Lebonnois2 1Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom; email:
[email protected] 2Laboratoire de Met´ eorologie´ Dynamique (LMD/IPSL), Sorbonne Universites,´ UPMC Univ Paris 06, ENS, PSL Research University, Ecole Polytechnique, Universite´ Paris Saclay, CNRS, 75000 Paris, France Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2018. 46:175–202 Keywords First published as a Review in Advance on atmospheres, dynamics, waves, Hadley circulation, Venus, Titan March 14, 2018 The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences is Abstract online at earth.annualreviews.org The superrotation of the atmospheres of Venus and Titan has puzzled dy- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-082517- Access provided by CNRS-Multi-Site on 02/15/19. For personal use only. namicists for many years and seems to put these planets in a very different 010137 dynamical regime from most other planets. In this review, we consider how Copyright c 2018 by Annual Reviews. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2018.46:175-202. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org to define superrotation objectively and explore the constraints that deter- All rights reserved mine its occurrence. Atmospheric superrotation also occurs elsewhere in the Solar System and beyond, and we compare Venus and Titan with Earth and other planets for which wind estimates are available. The extreme super- ANNUAL REVIEWS Further rotation on Venus and Titan poses some difficult challenges for numerical Click here to view this article's online features: models of atmospheric circulation, much more difficult than for more rapidly • Download figures as PPT slides rotating planets such as Earth or Mars.