I’m not interested in variants of the weather we already have, say 500mph winds, or sulfuric acid rain. I’m interested in weather phenomena that are as different from what we have on earth as lightning is different snow is different from wind is different from rain. Any thoughts?
Triple point water on a massive water planet.
So boiling seas of ice?
Rains of fire on planets where fire is used to clean the body, and water destroys it.
What is this supposed to mean?
Space weather. These phenomena would affect any airless planet orbiting an active star like our Sun.
Hrm…tricky. So I’m guessing the Giant Red Spot on Jupiter doesn’t count, cause its just a really big hurricane? That has been spinning at least as long as we’ve had the resoution to notice it, going on hundreds of years? SO a never ending hurricane doesn’t count?
What about the hexagonal storm on Saturn? I meant to say, thats an ordinary storm, right? But what’s the wind like at the vertexes (verticies?) does wind change direction at 120 degree angles on Earth?
Rains of fire, rivers of fire, but water will destroy their bodies, and they might not even know water exists until they try to take over Earth and it rains. No doubt it’s been done in some stories.
Whose bodies are we talking about? Nobody mentioned aliens.
It rains/snows methane and other hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon Titan, falling on rocks made of ice. And the bottom of the atmosphere of Jupiter and Saturn is believed to be in a superfluid state (not gaseous, not liquid, not really fog either), so who can guess what goes on in such a roil.
I would imagine there are some very interesting electrical storm phenomena on Jupiter, maybe lightning ball storms, plasma curtains, plasma tornadoes.
IIRC, the surface atmosphere of Venus is in a phase which isn’t well-described as either a liquid nor a gas.
I can see how my thread title could be interpreted to asking for creative science fiction Ideas but I was mostly interested in actual scientific weather phenomena.
Yeah, I was trying to get away from the usual suspects (giant sand storms on mars etc.). But I never knew about Saturns Hex storm so I’m glad you contributed :).
This question arose as I was watching a lighting storm and thinking what an interesting distinct effect lightning was as a side effect of our weather, which led me to wonder what other unique effects could occur if you had more extreme environments.
such as …
So…no sharknadoes?
Gotcha. I’ll see myself out.
Can we consider weather, ocean dynamics, and tectonics? They all deal with large-scale energy transfers and phase changes of planetary matter. If you include chemical reactions, things like wildfires could count as well. Then there’s other types of energy transfers: lightning or magnetic changes.
Much earthly weather concerns phase changes of water. Is it possible for some exotic phase of ice to exist in bulk on a planet? There could be weather phenomena based on large amounts of the water transitioning to and from that state.
A planet could slowly accumulate some meta-stable chemical (due to precipitation, radiation, meteorites, etc), only to have it suddenly react due to a triggering event (tectonic eruption, seasonal change, solar variance, etc).
Maybe a planet with a superconducting core that has changing magnetic fields. Which could cause other effects based on redirecting solar radiation.
Phase XI is thought to be very stable and may be present in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. In fact, ISTR reading that Ice XI may be the most common ice in the universe (which would make it the exact opposite of ‘exotic’).
Are we talking about weather on any kind of planet—like, Gas Giants and Ice Giants—or just rocky/terrestrial planets?
This is a good one. A large proportion of terrestrial planets are probably waterworlds; they would have an ocean covering the entire world, and the larger examples (so-called superearths) could be covered in a deep, warm ocean covered by a deep, thick atmosphere. If the atmosphere is thick enough there could be a supercritical fluid layer between the ocean an the air, a strange dense gas-like fluid that would be something like foamy liquid or dense gas. Too thick to fly in easily, too thin to swim in, astronauts would find such a layer a challenging volume to explore or colonise.