Venus hosts the solar system’s largest hydraulic jump, fueling towering sulfuric acid clouds
Scientists show that Venus’s 30-mile-high sulfuric acid clouds are generated by the solar system’s largest hydraulic jump, a vertical updraft triggered by a planet-wide eastward Kelvin wave that lifts sulfuric acid vapor to about 50 km, creating a massive cloud bank. The finding, based on new modeling, represents the first observed hydraulic jump on a planet beyond Earth and was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets.