Benchmark experiments with global climate models applicable to extra-solar gas giant planets in the shallow atmosphere approximation

TL;DR

This paper presents a standardized benchmarking approach for global climate models applied to exoplanetary atmospheres, focusing on gas giants in the shallow atmosphere approximation, and analyzes model variability and superrotation features.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed benchmark test for exoplanetary atmospheric models using the shallow PUMA model, enabling better comparison and understanding of model dependence.

Findings

Superrotation is consistently observed across all resolutions.

Model resolution affects energy spectra and variability.

Benchmark statistics facilitate model comparison and variability assessment.

Abstract

The growing field of exoplanetary atmospheric modelling has seen little work on standardised benchmark tests for its models, limiting understanding of the dependence of results on specific models and conditions. With spatially resolved observations as yet difficult to obtain, such a test is invaluable. Although an intercomparison test for models of tidally locked gas giant planets has previously been suggested and carried out, the data provided were limited in terms of comparability. Here, the shallow PUMA model is subjected to such a test, and detailed statistics produced to facilitate comparison, with both time means and the associated standard deviations displayed, removing the time dependence and providing a measure of the variability. Model runs have been analysed to determine the variability between resolutions, and the effect of resolution on the energy spectra studied. Superrotation is a robust and reproducible feature at all resolutions.