Weather Variability Of Close-in Extrasolar Giant Planets.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 2 1 0 4 9 9 v 2 1 2 M a r 2 0 0 3 Draft version February 2, 2008 Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 04/03/99 “WEATHER” VARIABILITY OF CLOSE-IN EXTRASOLAR GIANT PLANETS Kristen Menoua,1,2, James Y-K. Chob,c, Sara Seagerc Bradley M.S. Hansend aPrinceton University, Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA bSpectral Sciences Inc., 99 South Bedford St., # 7, Burlington, MA 01803, USA cCarnegie Institution of Washington, Dept. of Terrestrial Magnetism, 5241 Broad Branch Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20015, USA dDivision of Astronomy, 8971 Math Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA Draft version February 2, 2008 ABSTRACT Shallow-water numerical simulations show that the atmospheric circulation of the close-in extrasolar giant planet (EGP) HD 209458 b is characterized by moving circumpolar vortices and few bands/jets (in contrast with ～ 10 bands/jets and absence of polar vortices on cloud-top Jupiter and Saturn). The large spatial scales of moving circulation structures on HD 209458 b may generate detectable variability of the planet’s atmospheric signatures. In this Letter, we generalize these results to other close-in EGPs, by noting that shallow-water dynamics is essentially specified by the values of the Rossby (Ro) and Burger (Bu) dimensionless numbers. The range of likely values of Ro (～ 10 ?2–10) and Bu (～ 1–200) for the atmospheric flow of known close-in EGPs indicates that their circulation should be qualitatively similar to that of HD 209458 b. This results mostly from the slow rotation of these tidally-synchronized planets. Subject headings: planetary systems – planets and satellites: general – stars: atmospheres – turbulence 1. INTRODUCTION The focus of extrasolar planet research has broadened to now include the characterization of their physical prop- erties, as shown by the recent sodium detection in the atmosphere of HD 209458 b (Charbonneau et al. 2002). Atmospheric circulation is expec