Completely Colorblind: Advances in Gray Techniques and Applications to Planets Near and Far

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development and application of gray models in planetary atmospheres, highlighting recent advances, methods for generating mean opacities, and potential future improvements in gray techniques.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of gray models, including their history, recent applications in 3D atmospheric circulation, and comparisons across different models, with suggestions for future progress.

Findings

Gray models are widely used in planetary atmosphere simulations.

Gray radiative transfer tools are integrated into 3D circulation models.

Comparative analysis of gray models enhances understanding of convective fluxes.

Abstract

Gray models, which replace spectrally-resolved opacities with a wavelength independent mean opacity, are currently seeing wide and diverse application. In this brief review, we discuss both the history of gray techniques as well as recent applications of gray models, with an emphasis on planetary atmospheres. Methods and results for generating mean opacities are summarized. We present examples where gray radiative transfer tools are incorporated into three-dimensional atmospheric circulation models. Gray techniques are also useful for problems in comparative climatology, and we inter-compare results from several generalized gray models as applied to the computation of convective fluxes in planetary atmospheres. Finally, we provide examples where future progress can be made in the development of gray models.