GEOL 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Hadley Cell, Photochemistry
27 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
Atmospheric dynamics: through a telescope uranus and neptune appear greenish and are free of cloud structures. Voyager saw almost no cloud structure on uranus. Neptune shows some white clouds (this is at visible wavelengths!). This is caused by the fact that sunlight penetrates deeply and is scattered by methane (ch4) as it travels back to the surface, giving these planets their blue-green color. Methane absorption bands are seen in spectra, much stronger than on. This indicates that the proportion of methane is higher on neptune and uranus and is consistent with the higher proportion of ices in the total masses we have already discussed. Uranus and neptune are deficient in h and he relative to jupiter and. Where the pressure is about 1 bar (i. e. like sea level) the temperature is about 73 k (-200 c). This is the temperature of liquid nitrogen, and is much colder than on either jupiter or saturn.
