Planetary atmospheres

Rapid advances in our understanding of planetary atmospheres have occurred since the previous quadrennial review (Beebe, 1983), based to a large extent on analyses of planetary spacecraft data from earlier periods. The VEGA mission at Venus and Voyager 2 at Uranus provided new data, as did an active program of remote sensing from Earth and its vicinity. A number of valuable books and review articles appeared focusing on the origin and evolution of atmospheres as well as their present states (e.g., Lewis and Prinn, 1984; Hunt, 1983; Pollack and Consolmagno, 1984). Clearly, research on atmospheres in the solar system is no longer just exploratory; it has reached the stage of in‐depth study.