Hot-TEA · Hot Terrestrial Exo-planet Atmospheres: preparing new generation instrument observations with a global climate model

Hot Terrestrial Exo-planet Atmospheres: preparing new generation instrument observations with a global climate model

The rapid growth of extra-solar planet (ESP) discovery and characterisation over the last two decades increases our hope to detect life signatures in other worlds in the near future. Given the variety of planetary atmospheres in our Solar System and the number of ESP observed so far, a vast diversity among ESP climate is expected. The study of ESP atmospheres is nowadays seen as the new frontier in Astrophysics, crucial for typifying planets in the habitable zone. Innovative and promising techniques, used so far to identify hot-Jupiter atmospheres, are envisaged to detect Earth-size planet atmospheres by exploiting high resolution spectrographs and large telescopes. To tackle this challenge, major efforts are devoted to 1) find closest ESP targets with the strongest atmospheric signature 2) develop 3D theoretical tools to predict realistic climates. In the perspective of detecting more and more close-in-orbit hot terrestrial planets, Hot-TEA proposes to address observational prospects to Venus-like planets, with the goal of studying how the planet’s atmosphere modifies the observables. With mass and radius similar to the Earth, but a completely different climate, Venus is the best analogue of those future targets. The project has achieved most of its objectives and milestones for the period, with relatively minor deviations: - Identify favourable targets and observable. A number of favourable targets were identified to provide 3D model simulations of Venus-like planets (Trappist 1c and Trappist 1d). The atmosphere of those planets will be likely observable in the future by forthcoming high-resolution instrumentation (JWST, HIRES/ELT). - Set up the LMD Generic General Circulation Model for Venus-like planets. The results were validated using as reference the Venus GCM, which is a state-of-the-art model used to study the atmosphere of Venus from the surface to the thermosphere. - Provide predicted observable spectra of exo-Venus obtained varying the abundances and the radii of the aerosols in the Venus atmosphere. - Provide solid basis for future model development at the host institute. Although the project ended in August 2020, the long-term objectives of the project are still in line with the strategy of the IA Team, which is willing to invest in modeling extrasolar planet atmosphere in the future. The 3D model installed and set-up in the IA cluster is currently in use by a MSc student that I am supervising and will be in the future used by PhD students involved in IA funded projects.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз