Atmospheric Circulation of Hot Jupiters: A Review of Current Understanding

Abstract

Hot Jupiters are new laboratories for the physics of giant planet atmospheres. Subject to unusual forcing conditions, the circulation regime on these planets may be unlike anything known in the Solar System. Characterizing the atmospheric circulation of hot Jupiters is necessary for reliable interpretation of the multifaceted data currently being collected on these planets. We discuss several fundamental concepts of atmospheric dynamics that are likely central to obtaining a solid understanding of these fascinating atmospheres. A particular effort is made to compare the various modeling approaches employed so far to address this challenging problem.

21 pages, 4 figures. To be published in proceedings of the Conference on Extreme Solar Systems held in Santorini, Greece, June 25-29 2007

References in corpus (1)

• Atmospheric Circulation of Close-In Extrasolar Giant Planets: I. Global, Barotropic, Adiabatic Simulations

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Atmospheric Circulation of Hot Jupiters: A Shallow Three-Dimensional Model
• Atmospheric Dynamics of Hot Giant Planets and Brown Dwarfs
• Radiative Thrusters on Close-in Extrasolar Planets
• On Signatures of Atmospheric Features in Thermal Phase Curves of Hot Jupiters
• Diurnal Thermal Tides in a Non-synchronized Hot Jupiter
• Hot exoplanetary atmospheres in 3D
• The Atmospheres of Extrasolar Planets