The Venus Atmosphere: Understanding the atmosphere of Earths sister planet.

Constantine Tsang

The Venus atmosphere is perhaps the most enigmatic and fascinating planetary atmosphere in our Solar System. With its dense atmosphere of CO2, its proximity to Earth and its coupling with a solid surface, the Venus atmosphere is perhaps the most 'Earth-like' atmosphere there is in our Solar System. This makes the stark contrasts all the more mysterious and attractive to study and understand. Until recently, our understanding of the chemistry and dynamics of the Venus atmosphere was confined to the upper most levels, above the cloud deck near 45 km. The only way of probing the deep atmosphere below the clouds was through in-situ measurements using descent probes. However, a revolution in the early 1980's allowed for the first time remote-sensing of the troposphere, its dynamics and chemistry in the near-infrared between 0.8 and 2.6 µm. This talk begins by summarizing the major and most recent findings from the Venus Express orbiter, how it has transformed our knowledge and understanding of the atmosphere. We will look at how to model radiative transfer of the deep Venus atmosphere and the difficulties that come with it. We will then study the rewarding scientific results that come from this modeling and data analysis, focusing in on tropospheric CO and H2O. We conclude with what mysteries that still remain after more than 5 years in orbit.