The supplementary catalogue: Exoplanet weather and climate regimes with clouds and thermal ionospheres

David Lewis*, Christiane Helling, Robb Calder, Georgina Hirst, Dominic Samra, Peter Woitke, Robin Baeyens, Ludmila Carone

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Other contribution

Abstract

Extrasolar planets appear with a large diversity. The resulting atmospheric structures therefore span a wide range of thermodynamics and chemistry parameters which are best studied by the use of complex models as virtual laboratories. We aim to support the data interpretation for present and future missions, for example JWST, PLATO, Ariel, ARAGO, PolStar or POLLUX on LUVIORE with this catalogue of supplementary material to our main paper Helling et al. (2022). A grid of pre-calculated 3D GCMs is used as input for our kinetic cloud formation model that consistently describes the formation of nucleation seeds, the growth to macroscopic cloud particles and their evaporation, gravitational settling, element conservation and gas-phase chemistry. The gas-phase is assumed to be in chemical equilibrium, but the condensation appears only in phase non-equilibrium. The 3D GCM grid includes M, K, G, F host stars and global planetary temperatures Teff,P = 400 ... 2600K. The results are presented in the main paper, here we provide a more extensive coverage of our numerical data. The conclusions of the main paper are: The dayside cloud coverage is the tell-tale sign for the different planetary regimes and their resulting weather and climate appearance. Class (i) is representative of planets with a very homogeneous cloud particle size and material compositions across the globe, classes (ii) and (iii) have a large day/night divergence of the cloud properties. The C/O ratio is, hence, homogeneously affected in class (i), but asymmetrically in class (ii) and (iii). The atmospheres of class (i) and (ii) planets are little affected by thermal ionisation, but class (iii) planets exhibit a deep ionosphere on the dayside. Magnetic coupling will therefore affect different planets differently and will be more efficient on the more extended, cloud-free dayside. The depth of the ionosphere and how it connects atmospheric mass loss at the top of the atmosphere with deep atmospheric layers need to be investigated to coherently interpret high resolution observations of ultra-hot planets.
Original languageEnglish
TypeSupplementary Catalogue
Media of outputOnline
Number of pages37
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Sept 2022

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