Catastrophes in the Solar System

Earth sits between two worlds that have been devastated by climate catastrophes. In the effort to combat global warming, our neighbours can provide valuable insights into the way climate catastrophes affect planets.

Modelling Earth’s climate to predict its future has assumed tremendous importance in the light of mankind’s influence on the atmosphere. The climate of our two neighbours is in stark contrast to that of our home planet, making data from ESA’s Venus Express and Mars Express invaluable to climate scientists.
Venus is a cloudy inferno whilst Mars is a frigid desert. As current concerns about global warming have now achieved widespread acceptance, pressure has increased on scientists to propose solutions.

The atmosphere of Venus is much thicker than Earth’s. Nevertheless, current climate models can reproduce its present temperature structure well. Now planetary scientists want to turn the clock back to understand why and how Venus changed from its former Earth-like conditions into the inferno of today.

They believe that the planet experienced a runaway greenhouse effect as the Sun gradually heated up. Astronomers believe that the young Sun was dimmer than the present-day Sun by 30 percent. Over the last 4 thousand million years, it has gradually brightened. During this increase, Venus’s surface water evaporated and entered the atmosphere.

“Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas and it caused the planet to heat-up even more. This is turn caused more water to evaporate and led to a powerful positive feedback response known as the runaway greenhouse effect.”

As Earth warms in response to manmade pollution, it risks the same fate. Reconstructing the climate of the past on Venus can give scientists a better understanding of how close our planet is to such a catastrophe. However, determining when Venus passed the point of no return is not easy. That’s where ESA’s Venus Express comes in.

The spacecraft is in orbit around Venus collecting data that will help unlock the planet’s past. Venus is losing gas from its atmosphere, so Venus Express is measuring the rate of this loss and the composition of the gas being lost. It also watches the movement of clouds in the planet’s atmosphere. This reveals the way Venus responds to the absorption of sunlight, because the energy from the Sun provides the power that allows the atmosphere to move.

In addition, Venus Express is charting the amount and location of sulphur dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere. Sulphur dioxide is a greenhouse gas and is released by volcanoes on Venus.

What happened on these two worlds is very different but either would be equally disastrous for Earth. We are banking on our ability to accurately predict Earth’s future climate.

Climate catastrophes in the Solar System ESA press release 26 April 2007
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
Gliese and Earth-like Worlds from Centauri Dreams
NASA's AIM Mission Soars To The Edge Of Space
Satellites Play Vital Role In Understanding The Carbon Cycle
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________