ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to exploring the thermal structure of planetary atmospheres. We only deal here with the case of bodies with massive or substantial atmospheres where the heat transport is dominated primarily by radiation, and, secondly, by convection and heat transport by mass motion. In Chapter 6, we will present the thermal structure of bodies with tenuous atmospheres, including the upper part of massive atmospheres due to the similarity of the processes occurring on both, for example, the heat transport by conduction. We consider here the case of dry atmospheres, that is, we ˜rst assume that there are no phase transformations in the atmospheric composition (that is, condensation, evaporation, or sublimation) contributing as heat sources and sinks. The existence of condensable compounds and their effects on the vertical thermal structure of the atmospheres are discussed in Chapter 5, where they will be treated in conjunction with the cloud and aerosol formation phenomena.
