Effects of initial flow on close-in planet atmospheric circulation

Abstract

We use a general circulation model to study the three-dimensional (3D) flow and temperature distributions of atmospheres on tidally synchronized extrasolar planets. In this work, we focus on the sensitivity of the evolution to the initial flow state, which has not received much attention in 3D modeling studies. We find that different initial states lead to markedly different distributions - even under the application of strong forcing (large day-night temperature difference with a short "thermal drag time") that may be representative of close-in planets. This is in contrast with the results or assumptions of many published studies. In general, coherent jets and vortices (and their associated temperature distributions) characterize the flow, and they evolve differently in time, depending on the initial condition. If the coherent structures reach a quasi-stationary state, their spatial locations still vary. The result underlines the fact that circulation models are currently unsuitable for making quantitative predictions (e.g., location and size of a "hot spot") without better constrained, and well-posed, initial conditions. © 2010 The American Astronomical Society.