Wikipedia Easy Search

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. (January 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Schematic of hydrodynamic escape. Energy from solar radiation is deposited in a thin shell. This energy heats the atmosphere, which then begins to expand. This expansion continues into the vacuum of space, accelerating as it goes until it escapes.

In atmospheric science, hydrodynamic escape refers to a thermal atmospheric escape mechanism that can lead to the escape of heavier atoms of a planetary atmosphere through numerous collisions with lighter atoms.