Impact of Planetary Parameters on Water Clouds Microphysics

Potentially habitable exoplanets are targets of great interest for upcoming astronomical observatories and mission concepts such as JWST, LUVOIR, HabEx, OST, and MIRECLE. Clouds strongly affect climate and habitability, but they are highly uncertain. Cloud microphysics, in particular, is often crudely approximated by assuming that all cloud particles have a single, constant size. Notably, exoplanets range over a large phase space of their planetary properties, which makes direct simulations of microphysics other than solely improved parameterizations necessary. In this work, our goal is to determine how cloud microphysics on terrestrial exoplanets depends on planetary parameters such as surface pressure, surface gravity, incident stellar radiation, aerosol content, and atmospheric composition. We use CARMA, which is a microphysical model that simulates the formation and evolution of clouds including the processes of nucleation, condensation, evaporation, coagulation, and vertical transfer. This work promises to deliver predictions of exoplanet habitability and future observational characterization informed by sophisticated cloud microphysical modeling.