Earth has one of the most interesting weather systems. Its atmosphere is ideal for moving hot and cold air around, and a hydrological cycle allows for precipitation. But throughout our solar system, there are other planets that have more extreme and also fascinating weather patterns worth exploring.
1. Mars
Mars has weather and in certain ways, it’s similar to that of Earth. For example, it has seasons and it has winds. But in other ways, it’s very different.
The orbit of the planet causes the mostly carbon atmosphere to go from freezing to much warmer and it serves to kick up a global dust storm that periodically sends the Red Planet into a tizzy.
The temperatures on Mars are also much more extreme than on Earth. NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, for example, has recorded temperatures ranging from negative 14 degrees Fahrenheit to negative 120 degrees Fahrenheit in a single day.
Read More: What Would a Trip to Mars Look Like For a Tourist?
2. Titan
Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, but it also boasts some crazy weather patterns. For starters, it has a similar hydrological cycle to Earth. But instead of water, Titan has methane.
The natural gas freezes, liquifies, and turns to gas, says Jason Steffen, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Instead of having the triple point of water, it has the triple point of methane.”
Titan has a lot of the same kinds of weather patterns and erosion as Earth, with methane clouds that drop methane down to the surface of the moon and freeze into a solid.
Read More: The Weather On Titan: Windy With A Chance Of Methane Mist
3. Jupiter
Storms on Jupiter come and go, but Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been there for at least 400 years.
“We know it because Galileo saw it,” says Steffen.
It’s a long-lived high-pressure storm that’s largely a mystery. The largest and most powerful storms ever recorded on Earth are around 1,000 miles across with winds of 200 MPH. The Great Red Spot is much larger: twice the size of Earth with winds of 400 MPH.
While we don’t know why it’s red or what it’s made of, we do know that a storm that size on planet Earth would be difficult to escape, hurricane warnings be damned.
Read More: Jupiter’s 8700-Mile-Wide Great Red Spot Keeps Shrinking
4. Neptune
Neptune is extremely cold, with an average temperature of negative 353 degrees Fahrenheit, and it also has among the most extreme weather in the solar system. Its winds are super strong, nine times stronger than that of Earth, averaging 1,200 MPH.
In 1989, a storm was documented on Neptune and named the Great Dark Spot. It was large enough to envelop the Earth in its center. Though the storm is no longer present, others have sprung up since then in its place.
Read More: Why Are Uranus and Neptune So Different From Each Other?
5. Venus
When you’re thinking extreme, you have to think of Venus, which is the hottest planet in our solar system despite not being the closest to the sun, says Sumangala Rao, an astronomer at San Diego State University. The surface temperature on Venus is 869 degrees Fahrenheit.
“It’s so hot that lead would melt on its surface,” says Rao. Nicknamed the “hellish inferno,” it’s super toasty because it has an atmosphere that’s 100 times thicker than Earth that’s dominated by carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that’s known on Earth for holding heat.
Clouds made of sulfuric acid blanket Venus and rain down on its surface, but because it’s so hot, liquid evaporates long before it hits the ground. There’s also no temperature variations throughout the day. Day and night are one and the same: hot, hot, hot. While no life could survive on Venus, there is some research exploring whether it could survive in the planet’s sulfuric acid clouds, says Rao.
Read More: Venus May Have Once Hosted Seas Like Earth, But Is Bone Dry Today
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Sara Novak is a science journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing for Discover, her work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, and many more. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. She’s also a candidate for a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University, (expected graduation 2023).
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