Atmospheric Circulation of Hot Jupiters: Dayside–Nightside Temperature Differences. II. Comparison with Observations
By T. Komacek, A. Showman, Xianyu Tan. 2016
164 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The full-phase infrared light curves of low-eccentricity hot Jupiters show a trend of increasing fractional dayside–nightside brightness temperature difference with increasing incident stellar flux, both averaged across the infrared and in each individual wavelength band. The analytic theory of Komacek & Showman shows that this trend is due to the decreasing ability with increasing incident stellar flux of waves to propagate from day to night and erase temperature differences. Here, we compare the predictions of this theory with observations, showing that it explains well the shape of the trend of increasing dayside–nightside temperature difference with increasing equilibrium temperature. Applied to individual planets, the theory matches well with observations at high equilibrium temperatures but, for a fixed photosphere pressure of , systematically underpredicts the dayside–nightside brightness temperature differences at equilibrium temperatures less than . We interpret this as being due to the effects of a process that moves the infrared photospheres of these cooler hot Jupiters to lower pressures. We also utilize general circulation modeling with double-gray radiative transfer to explore how the circulation changes with equilibrium temperature and drag strengths. As expected from our theory, the dayside–nightside temperature differences from our numerical simulations increase with increasing incident stellar flux and drag strengths. We calculate model phase curves using our general circulation models, from which we compare the broadband infrared offset from the substellar point and dayside–nightside brightness temperature differences against observations, finding that strong drag or additional effects (e.g., clouds and/or supersolar metallicities) are necessary to explain many observed phase curves.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c5f3b8d00dc4f577af63191fbbb9f3533b94ad20
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Citations in the corpus
- From thermal dissociation to condensation in the atmospheres of ultra hot Jupiters: WASP-121b in context (2018, background): “Both the small albedo of ultra hot Jupiters and weak redistribution are theoretical expectations (PerezBecker & Showman 2013; Komacek & Showman 2016) that have been confirmed by the observations so far (Komacek et al. 2017; Bell et al. 2017).”
- TRANSITIONS IN THE CLOUD COMPOSITION OF HOT JUPITERS (2016, background): “…of σ = 1.05 around the mean particle size in order to smooth the Mie bumps in the opacities. temperature variation across the dayside increases with the equilibrium temperature, as does the day/night temperature contrast (Perna et al. 2012; Perez-Becker & Showman 2013; Komacek & Showman 2016).”
- Global Climate and Atmospheric Composition of the Ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-103b from HST and Spitzer Phase Curve Observations (2018, background): “Fast radiative timescales are predicted at high temperatures, and small hotspot offsets are also observed for other very hot Jupiters (Perez-Becker & Showman 2013; Komacek & Showman 2016; Komacek et al. 2017).”
- SPITZER PHASE CURVE CONSTRAINTS FOR WASP-43b AT 3.6 AND 4.5 μm (2016, methodology): “…from equatorial jets redistributing heat from the hot dayside to the cooler nightside and are non-trivially connected to an atmosphere’s radiative, advective/vertical, and drag timescales (Cowan & Agol 2011; Perna et al. 2012; Perez-Becker & Showman 2013; Crossfield 2015; Komacek & Showman 2016).”