Related papers: Thermal Inertia Controls on Titan's Surface Temper…
Wind shear measured by Doppler tracking of the Huygens probe is evaluated, and found to be within the range anticipated by pre-flight assessments (namely less than two times the Brunt-Vaisala frequency). The strongest large-scale shear…
We investigate the linear stability of a thermally stratified fluid layer confined between horizontal walls and subject to continuous injection of dilute thermal particles at one boundary and extraction at the opposite, forming a…
Global Climate Models (GCM) are very useful tools to study theoretically the general dynamics and specific phenomena in planetary atmospheres. In the case of Venus, several GCMs succeeded in reproducing the atmosphere's superrotation and…
Titan's stratosphere has been observed in a superrotation state, where the atmosphere rotates many times faster than the surface does. Another characteristics of Titan's atmosphere is the presence of thick haze layer. In this paper, we…
Next-generation space telescopes will observe the atmospheres of rocky planets orbiting nearby M-dwarfs. Understanding these observations will require well-developed theory in addition to numerical simulations. Here we present theoretical…
Planets in M dwarf stars' habitable zones are likely to be tidally locked with orbital periods of order tens of days. This means that the effects of rotation on atmospheric dynamics will be relatively weak, which requires small horizontal…
We develop innovative analytical expressions for the mean wind and potential temperature flux profiles in convective boundary layers (CBLs). CBLs are frequently observed during daytime as the Earth's surface is warmed by solar radiation.…
We compare the spectral properties of long meteorological temperature records with laboratory measurements in small convection cells. Surprisingly, the atmospheric boundary layer sampled on a daily scale shares the statistical properties of…
Planets with non-zero obliquity and/or orbital eccentricity experience seasonal variations of stellar irradiation at local latitudes. The extent of the atmospheric response can be crudely estimated by the ratio between the orbital timescale…
Several distant icy worlds have atmospheres that are in vapor-pressure equilibrium with their surface volatiles, including Pluto, Triton, and, probably, several large KBOs near perihelion. Studies of the volatile and thermal evolution of…
Titan's moment of inertia, calculated assuming hydrostatic equilibrium from gravity field data obtained during the Cassini-Huygens mission, implies an internal mass distribution that may be incompatible with complete differentiation. This…
The knowledge of the Venus near-surface atmosphere is sparse. Few spacecrafts landed on the surface and measured winds with amplitudes below 1 m/s. The diurnal cycle of the wind amplitude and orientation is not known. Recent numerical…
Titan's middle atmosphere is currently experiencing a rapid change of season after northern spring arrived in 2009. A large cloud was observed for the first time above Titan's southern pole in May 2012, at an altitude of 300 km. This…
Next-generation space telescopes will allow us to characterize terrestrial exoplanets. To do so effectively it will be crucial to make use of all available data. We investigate which atmospheric properties can, and cannot, be inferred from…
Sub-Neptunes (planets with radii between 2 and 4 R$_{\oplus}$) are abundant around M-dwarf stars, yet the atmospheric dynamics of these planets is relatively unexplored. In this paper, we aim to provide a basic underpinning of the dry…
Wall cooling has substantial effects on the development of instabilities and transition processes in hypersonic boundary layers (HBLs). A sequence of linear stability theory, two-dimensional and non-linear three-dimensional DNSs is used to…
We present a new first-principles analytic approach to interpreting eclipses and phase curves of rocky planets. Observations with JWST have reported nondetections of atmospheres around the majority of hot rocky planets orbiting M dwarfs.…
The nature of the flow below the cloud level on Jupiter and Saturn is still unknown. Relating the flow on these planets to perturbations in their density field is key to the analysis of the gravity measurements expected from both the Juno…
Planetary rotation rate is a key parameter in determining atmospheric circulation and hence the spatial pattern of clouds. Since clouds can exert a dominant control on planetary radiation balance, rotation rate could be critical for…
Thermal phase curves of exoplanet atmospheres have revealed temperature maps as a function of planetary longitude, often by sinusoidal decomposition of the phase curve. We construct a framework for describing two-dimensional temperature…