ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION OF HOT JUPITERS: COUPLED RADIATIVE-DYNAMICAL GENERAL CIRCULATION MODEL SIMULATIONS OF HD 189733b and HD 209458b

By A. Showman, Jon Fortney, Yuan Lian, M. Marley, Richard Freedman, Heather A. Knutson, David Charbonneau. 2008

359 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present global, three-dimensional numerical simulations of HD 189733b and HD 209458b that couple the atmospheric dynamics to a realistic representation of nongray cloud-free radiative transfer. The model, which we call the Substellar and Planetary Atmospheric Radiation and Circulation model, adopts the MITgcm for the dynamics and uses the radiative model of McKay, Marley, Fortney, and collaborators for the radiation. Like earlier work with simplified forcing, our simulations develop a broad eastward equatorial jet, mean westward flow at higher latitudes, and substantial flow over the poles at low pressure. For HD 189733b, our simulations without TiO and VO opacity can explain the broad features of the observed 8 and 24 μm light curves, including the modest day–night flux variation and the fact that the planet/star flux ratio peaks before the secondary eclipse. Our simulations also provide reasonable matches to the Spitzer secondary-eclipse depths at 4.5, 5.8, 8, 16, and 24 μm and the ground-based upper limit at 2.2 μm. However, we substantially underpredict the 3.6 μm secondary-eclipse depth, suggesting that our simulations are too cold in the 0.1–1 bar region. Predicted temporal variability in secondary-eclipse depths is ∼1% at Spitzer bandpasses, consistent with recent observational upper limits at 8 μm. We also show that nonsynchronous rotation can significantly alter the jet structure. For HD 209458b, we include TiO and VO opacity; these simulations develop a hot (>2000 K) dayside stratosphere whose horizontal dimensions are small at depth but widen with altitude. Despite this stratosphere, we do not reproduce current Spitzer photometry of this planet. Light curves in Spitzer bandpasses show modest phase variation and satisfy the observational upper limit on day–night phase variation at 8 μm.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/36f8cab6a95301f12b0904d1b19543d108b855db

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Madhusudhan
2. Jon Fortney
3. A. Showman
4. D. Deming
5. M. Marley
6. D. Sing
7. D. Charbonneau
8. H. Knutson

Citations in the corpus

• CAN TiO EXPLAIN THERMAL INVERSIONS IN THE UPPER ATMOSPHERES OF IRRADIATED GIANT PLANETS? (2009, methodology): “According to the analysis of Showman et al. (2008a), on this planet τrad > τcirc at pressures deeper than 1 bar.”
• ATMOSPHERIC RETRIEVAL FOR SUPER-EARTHS: UNIQUELY CONSTRAINING THE ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION WITH TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY (2012, neutral): “For hot Jupiters, previous studies (e.g., Showman et al. 2009) assumed chemical equilibrium in combination with solar composition as a fiducial estimate of the composition.”
• TRANSMISSION SPECTRA OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL HOT JUPITER MODEL ATMOSPHERES (2009, methodology): “The simulations use 53 vertical layers, with a base at 200 bar and a top at 2µbar (see Showman et al. 2009).”
• The escape of heavy atoms from the ionosphere of HD209458b. I. A photochemical–dynamical model of the thermosphere (2012, neutral): “Radiative transfer models for close-in EGPs (e.g.,319 Showman et al., 2009, and references therein) do not account for heating by320 stellar UV radiation or possible opacity sources created by photochemistry321 (e.g., Zahnle et al., 2009).”
• NO THERMAL INVERSION AND A SOLAR WATER ABUNDANCE FOR THE HOT JUPITER HD 209458B FROM HST/WFC3 SPECTROSCOPY (2016, background): “…most serious issue for the thermal inversion hypothesis is that the Spitzer photometric bands typically used to discriminate for inversions are expected to probe similar pressure levels for solar-like composition atmospheres in chemical equilibrium (Burrows et al. 2007, 2008; Showman et al. 2009).”
• A TEMPERATURE AND ABUNDANCE RETRIEVAL METHOD FOR EXOPLANET ATMOSPHERES (2009, methodology): “In an ideal world, one would construct fully self-consistent 3D atmosphere models (e.g., Showman et al. 2009) that include hydrodynamic flow, radiative transfer, cloud microphysics, photochemistry and non-equilibrium chemistry, and run such models over all of parameter space anticipated to be valid.”
• THE CLIMATE OF HD 189733b FROM FOURTEEN TRANSITS AND ECLIPSES MEASURED BY SPITZER (2010, background): “In particular, the measured phase variation can be qualitatively explained by general circulation models, such as Showman et al. (2009a) and Rauscher and Menou (2010), while two-hemisphere models have more difficulty explaining the shape and variation of the phase function (Burrows et al. 2008);…”
• A SYSTEMATIC RETRIEVAL ANALYSIS OF SECONDARY ECLIPSE SPECTRA. II. A UNIFORM ANALYSIS OF NINE PLANETS AND THEIR C TO O RATIOS (2013, neutral): “Showman et al. (2009) and Parmentier, Showman & Lian (2013) demonstrated that TiO could be severely depleted due to cold traps in the deep atmosphere and on the planet’s night side.”
• SEARCH FOR CARBON MONOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE TRANSITING EXOPLANET HD 189733b (2009, background): “However, recent 3D models (Showman et al. 2008) shows that the planet could experience dramatic day/night temperature variations along the planetary limb.”
• QUANTITATIVELY ASSESSING THE ROLE OF CLOUDS IN THE TRANSMISSION SPECTRUM OF GJ 1214b (2013, neutral): “(2) IfKzz is large, like those of hot Jupiters (Showman et al. (2009) finds that hot Jupiters have Clouds in GJ1214b 11 Kzz∼ 1011cm2 s−1), then the updraft velocity will be large.”
• 3D mixing in hot Jupiters atmospheres. I. Application to the day/night cold trap in HD 209458b (2013, methodology): “The huge day-night temperature difference and cold nightside temperatures predicted on many hot Jupiters at low pressure (e.g., Showman et al. 2009) suggest that, in addition to TiO, a wide range of other chemical species, including silicates and iron, will condense on the nightside.”
• Atmospheric circulation of tidally locked exoplanets: a suite of benchmark tests for dynamical solvers (2010, methodology): “Finally, we note that an alternative approach within grid-based methods is to adopt a ‘cubed-sphere’ grid, which circumvents the problems at the poles at the price of dealing with a non-orthogonal grid (e.g. Adcroft et al. 2004; Showman et al. 2009).”
• SPITZER PHASE CURVE CONSTRAINTS FOR WASP-43b AT 3.6 AND 4.5 μm (2016, methodology): “Using the SPARC/MITgcm (Showman et al. 2009), a state-ofthe-art coupled radiation and circulation model, we explored the effects of composition, metallicity, and frictional drag (a crude parameterization of possible Lorentz forces) on the atmospheric circulation of WASP-43b.”
• A CORRELATION BETWEEN STELLAR ACTIVITY AND HOT JUPITER EMISSION SPECTRA (2010, background): “Infrared light from these planets emerges from pressures of 10-100 mbar (e.g. Burrows et al. 2008; Showman et al. 2009), and as a result their dayside emission spectra could exhibit strong features from photochemically produced molecules.”
• Exoplanetary Atmospheres: Key Insights, Challenges, and Prospects (2019, neutral): “and dynamical treatment, about a decade ago (239) a number of GCMs are prevalent in the field today with varied levels of complexity.”
• ON THE ANOMALOUS RADII OF THE TRANSITING EXTRASOLAR PLANETS (2011, background): “This wind velocity is nearly identical to the average wind velocity at 10 bar depth found by Showman et al. (2009) for a solar metallicity atmospheric model of HD 189733 (M = 1.2 MJup, Teff = 1202 K).”
• The Complete Transmission Spectrum of WASP-39b with a Precise Water Constraint (2017, methodology): “The SPARC/MITgcm couples the MITgcm, a finite-volume code that solves the 3D primitive equations on a staggered Arakawa C grid (Adcroft et al. 2004) with a two-stream adaptation of a multistream radiative transfer code for solar system planets (Marley & McKay 1999).”
•  ?> -REx. II. RETRIEVAL OF EMISSION SPECTRA (2015, background): “…to the relevant literature for a more in-depth discussion on the various analytic approaches (e.g. Liou 2002; Hubeny et al. 2003; Hansen 2008; Burrows et al. 2008; Showman et al. 2009; Madhusudhan & Seager 2009; Pierrehumbert 2010; Guillot 2010; Heng et al. 2012, 2014; Robinson & Catling 2012).”
• NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY OF THE EXTRASOLAR PLANET HR 8799 b (2010, background): “…valuable tests of irradiated planetary atmospheric models and have shown evidence for temperature inversions (e.g., Knutson et al. 2009; Spiegel et al. 2009), global atmospheric dynamics (Showman et al. 2009), and non-equilibrium carbon chemistry (e.g., Cooper & Showman 2006; Swain et al. 2010).”