Lightning in other planets

Abstract

More than 4000 planet are known that orbit stars other than our Sun. Many harbor a dynamic atmosphere that is cold enough that cloud particles can form in abundance. The diversity of exoplanets leads to differences in cloud coverage depending on global system parameters. Some planets will be fully covered in clouds, some have clouds on the nightside but are largely cloud-free on the dayside. These cloud particles can easily be charged and lightning discharges will occur in cloudy, dynamic exoplanet atmosphere. Lightning supports a Global Electric Circuit (GCE) on Earth and we argue that exoplanet may develop a GCE in particular if parts of the exoplanet atmospheres can remain cloud free.

7 pages, reviewed proceeding of an invited keynote talk for 'Electrostatics 2019', accepted for publication in the Journal of Physics Conference Series

References in corpus (17)

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Exoplanet weather and climate regimes with clouds and thermal ionospheres: A model grid study in support of large-scale observational campaigns
• Understanding the atmospheric properties and chemical composition of the ultra-hot Jupiter HAT-P-7b: III. Changing ionisation and the emergence of an ionosphere
• Evidence of Radius Inflation in Radiative GCM Models of WASP-76b due to the Advection of Potential Temperature
• Lightning activity on a tidally locked terrestrial exoplanet in storm-resolving simulations for a range of surface pressures