Simulating Climate on Slowly Rotating Exoplanets
Abstract
A pseudo 3D exoplanet climate model is presented in which the ocean and atmosphere are simulated via stacked 2D meshes with a one dimensional vertical coupling. Both the ocean and atmosphere are simulated using a hydrodynamic solution in spherical polar coordinates, vertically coupled to climate models for water evaporation, condensation, transport, solar heating, and ice melting/formation. The hydrodynamic equations for a compressible hydrostatic atmosphere in pressure coordinates and an incompressible hydrostatic ocean in height coordinates with appropriate source/sink terms for each are solved using an Eulerian grid and second order finite-differencing. The computer code (PISCES) is written in C++ and is fully parallelized to run efficiently on GPUs using OpenCL or CUDA, or CPUs using multithreading. The ocean is modeled using two layers: a hydrodynamically active surface layer and a static abyss. The atmosphere is modeled using two hydrodynamically active layers: a surface layer and an upper layer. The time evolution of the exoplanet's rotation and orbital motion about its host star is also simulated over several decades. Simulation results will be presented which show how climate evolves on Earth-like tidally locked and slowly rotating planets. These results investigate how the climate changes and ice distribution forms with varying parameters such as planet size, orbital distance and period, rotational period, and ice/water content. In the future, this model can be applied to various exoplanets to help determine how atmospheric composition affects climate and habitability.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #235
- Pub Date:
- January 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AAS...23517304K