The Interplay Between a Hot Jupiter’s Thermal Evolution and its Atmospheric Circulation

Details The Interplay Between a Hot Jupiter’s Thermal Evolution and its Atmospheric Circulation The Interplay Between a Hot Jupiter’s Thermal Evolution and its Atmospheric Circulation

Sep 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011ess.....2.1305r&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #2, #13.05

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Gas giant exoplanets cool and shrink as they age. A planet subject to intense stellar irradiation will have a thick radiative zone above its deep, convective interior. It is well known that this surface boundary condition will alter the thermal evolution of the planet, keeping it hotter and larger for longer. The three-dimensional temperature structure of the radiative zone is in large part determined by the atmospheric circulation at work in that region. In addition, it is possible that a downward transport of kinetic energy from the atmospheric dynamics can provide an additional source of heating at depth and slow evolutionary cooling (a possible explanation for the anomalously large radii of some hot Jupiters). Unfortunately, cooling rates that are derived from one-dimensional, static, globally averaged temperature-pressure profiles must either neglect or parameterize the effect of atmospheric dynamics. Here we present three-dimensional numerical simulations (with coupled radiation and hydrodynamics) that model a hot Jupiter’s atmospheric circulation at several ages throughout its cooling history. These results show both: a) how atmospheric circulation is influenced by the evolutionary state of the planet, and b) how the thermal evolution of the planet may be influenced by its atmospheric circulation.

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