THOR 2.0: Major Improvements to the Open-source General Circulation Model

THORis the first open-source general circulation model (GCM) developed from scratch to study the atmospheres and climates of exoplanets, free from Earth- or solar-system-centric tunings. It solves the general nonhydrostatic Euler equations (instead of the primitive equations) on a sphere using the icosahedral grid. In the current study, we report major upgrades toTHOR, building on the work of Mendonca et al. First, while the horizontally explicit and vertically implicit integration scheme is the same as that described in Mendonca et al., we provide a clearer description of the scheme and improve its implementation in the code. The differences in implementation between the hydrostatic shallow, quasi-hydrostatic deep, and nonhydrostatic deep treatments are fully detailed. Second, standard physics modules are added: two-stream, double-gray radiative transfer and dry convective adjustment. Third,THORis tested on additional benchmarks: tidally locked Earth, deep hot Jupiter, acoustic wave, and gravity wave. Fourth, we report that differences between the hydrostatic and nonhydrostatic simulations are negligible in the Earth case but pronounced in the hot Jupiter case. Finally, the effects of the so-called sponge layer, a form of drag implemented in most GCMs to provide numerical stability, are examined. Overall, these upgrades have improved the flexibility, user-friendliness, and stability ofTHOR.