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My planet has a day length of ~52 earth hours. This means storms like hurricaines and thunderstorms will be weaker.

How do I combat this and generate really strong storms and winds on a slow rotating planet? Or atleast storms comparable to those experienced on earth.

Other details: 2-3x earth gravity, highly accelerated plate tectonics leading to tall mountains, 2 large oceans, average global temperature is slightly lower than earth's, atmosphere is only slightly thicker, isn't super young just really active due to an abnormally hot core and unusual crust composition

Notes: This planet will not be hosting human life. I was basing my idea of storms being weaker do to the weaker coriolis effect which would cause storms to have less rotation and less energy concentration.

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  • $\begingroup$ What is your definition of "strong" or "weak" storm? $\endgroup$
    – L.Dutch ♦
    Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 7:02
  • $\begingroup$ Give it a big satellite, like Moon, only closer. $\endgroup$
    – Alexander
    Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 7:04
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    $\begingroup$ This means storms like hurricaines and thunderstorms will be weaker. Do you have a ref/link that indicates weaker storms for longer days, I'm curious why would be so? 3G means 1.44 Earth R (so even if not proportionally, still larger Coriolis). Accelerated plate tectonics means younger planet (+larger) suggests a likelihood of a thicker atmosphere. Besides the "engine" of the tropical storms are ocean temperature differentials, which should be larger with a longer period of insolation (and comparative larger heat escape during a longer night, thus higher temperature differential). $\endgroup$
    – Adrian Colomitchi
    Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 7:32
  • $\begingroup$ You assumption is incorrect. Planet rotation affects the path of storms, but the energy in the storm derives largely from thermal gradients between airmasses (and between air and the ocean when a hurricane hasn't made landfall) $\endgroup$
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 15:58
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    $\begingroup$ @Aezyc Are you going to have human characters land on that planet and spend time there? A surface gravity 3 to 2 times Earth gravity is likely to be bad for their health. Astronauts lying down in padded launch chairs have no trouble with 2 to 3 g for a few seconds or minutes during launch. They can survive much higher g forces for such short times. But AFIK centrifuge tests reveal that constant high g will show bad health results in just a few days. You should research this. $\endgroup$
    – M. A. Golding
    Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 17:01

1 Answer 1

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Look no further than Venus, my friend.

A planet about the size of Earth, but rotating more than 50 times slower. There is a lot of weather there. Yes, rotation plays a roll in weather, but so does heat and gravity. The different parts of the air are heated in different ways depending on altitude and location and density. That difference causes a lot of convection (thus wind).

That wind blowing up, down, and all around creates all kinds of exciting weather, just like we see on Earth. Tornadoes, hurricanes, and that drizzle that just kind of gets on your glasses even though you have an umbrella for some reason.

This NASA page has some fun pics of Venus weather: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/venus-temp20110926.html

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