Venus Syndrome

Venus Syndrome

A runaway greenhouse effect occurs when a planet's atmosphere contains greenhouse gas in an amount sufficient to block thermal radiation from leaving the planet, preventing the planet from cooling and from having liquid water on its surface. A runaway version of the greenhouse effect can be defined by a limit on a planet's outgoing longwave radiation which is asymptotically reached due to higher surface temperatures evaporating water into the atmosphere, increasing its optical depth. This positive feedback means the planet cannot cool down through longwave radiation (via the Stefan–Boltzmann law) and continues to heat up until it can radiate outside of the absorption bands of the water vapour. The runaway greenhouse effect is often formulated with water vapour as the condensable species. The water vapour reaches the stratosphere and escapes into space via hydrodynamic escape, resulting in a desiccated planet. This likely happened in the early history of Venus. A runaway greenhouse effect would have virtually no chance of being caused by people. Venus-like conditions on Earth require a large long-term forcing that is unlikely to occur until the sun brightens by some tens of percents, which will take a few billion years.

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