Colossal clouds cloak the surface of Venus, making it difficult for researchers to probe its secrets.

One way astronomers have peered through the haze is with the European Space Agency’s Venus Express satellite, which orbited the veiled planet from 2006 until 2014. Data collected by the craft revealed how features on the surface, like mountains, can influence weather patterns many miles above.

“We now have good evidence of a connection between the surface and what we see in the atmosphere that was never clear before,” said Håkan Svedhem, project scientist for the E.S.A.’s Venus Express mission.

[Read about the search for life on Venus and the detction of phosphine in its clouds.]

The finding, which was published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research, might help researchers better understand the hurricane-like winds that blast a 12-mile-thick blanket of clouds around the planet. Venus’s atmosphere undergoes a weather condition known as super-rotation. While the planet itself spins slowly along its axis, completing a full spin about once every 243 Earth days, its clouds move much faster, zooming around Venus in about four Earth days.