Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 841, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6e57
Keywords
atmospheric effects; methods: numerical; planets and satellites: general
Categories
Funding
- Leverhulme Trust
- Met Office Academic Partnership secondment
- ERC [320478-TOFU, 247060-PEPS]
- NASA Astrobiology Program through Nexus for Exoplanet System Science
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/H008535/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- STFC [ST/H008535/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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The anomalously large radii of strongly irradiated exoplanets have remained a major puzzle in astronomy. Based on a two-dimensional steady-state atmospheric circulation model, the validity of which is assessed by comparison to three-dimensional calculations, we reveal a new mechanism, namely the advection of the potential temperature due to mass and longitudinal momentum conservation, a process occurring in the Earth's atmosphere or oceans. In the deep atmosphere, the vanishing heating flux forces the atmospheric structure to converge to a hotter adiabat than the one obtained with 1D calculations, implying a larger radius for the planet. Not only do the calculations reproduce the observed radius of HD 209458b, but also reproduce the observed correlation between radius inflation and irradiation for transiting planets. Vertical advection of potential temperature induced by non-uniform atmospheric heating thus provides a robust mechanism to explain the inflated radii of irradiated hot Jupiters.
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