1 research outputs found
Simulations of idealised 3D atmospheric flows on terrestrial planets using LFRic-Atmosphere
We demonstrate that LFRic-Atmosphere, a model built using the Met Office's
GungHo dynamical core, is able to reproduce idealised large-scale atmospheric
circulation patterns specified by several widely-used benchmark recipes. This
is motivated by the rapid rate of exoplanet discovery and the ever-growing need
for numerical modelling and characterisation of their atmospheres. Here we
present LFRic-Atmosphere's results for the idealised tests imitating
circulation regimes commonly used in the exoplanet modelling community. The
benchmarks include three analytic forcing cases: the standard Held-Suarez test,
the Menou-Rauscher Earth-like test, and the Merlis-Schneider Tidally Locked
Earth test. Qualitatively, LFRic-Atmosphere agrees well with other numerical
models and shows excellent conservation properties in terms of total mass,
angular momentum and kinetic energy. We then use LFRic-Atmosphere with a more
realistic representation of physical processes (radiation, subgrid-scale
mixing, convection, clouds) by configuring it for the four TRAPPIST-1 Habitable
Atmosphere Intercomparison (THAI) scenarios. This is the first application of
LFRic-Atmosphere to a possible climate of a confirmed terrestrial exoplanet.
LFRic-Atmosphere reproduces the THAI scenarios within the spread of the
existing models across a range of key climatic variables. Our work shows that
LFRic-Atmosphere performs well in the seven benchmark tests for terrestrial
atmospheres, justifying its use in future exoplanet climate studies.Comment: 34 pages, 9(12) figures; Submitted to Geoscientific Model
Development; Comments are welcome (see Discussion tab on the journal's
website: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-647