A Simple Model for Radiative and Convective Fluxes in Planetary Atmospheres

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple analytical model for radiative and convective fluxes in planetary atmospheres, validated against complex models for planets like Venus, Earth, and Jupiter, aiding comparative planetology.

Contribution

The paper develops a new, simplified analytic expression for thermal radiative fluxes in planetary atmospheres, validated across diverse planetary conditions, enhancing understanding of atmospheric heat transfer.

Findings

Analytic flux profiles match sophisticated models within acceptable accuracy.

Thermal radiative fluxes respond predictably to changes in optical depth.

Scaling laws enable comparison of convective profiles across planets.

Abstract

One-dimensional (vertical) models of planetary atmospheres typically balance the net solar and internal energy fluxes against the net thermal radiative and convective heat fluxes to determine an equilibrium thermal structure. Thus,simple models of shortwave and long wave radiative transport can provide insight into key processes operating within planetary atmospheres. Here, we develop a simple, analytic expression for both the downwelling thermal and net thermal radiative fluxes in a planetary troposphere. We assume that the atmosphere is non-scattering at thermal wavelengths and that opacities are grey at these same wavelengths. Additionally, we adopt an atmospheric thermal structure that follows a modified dry adiabat as well as a physically motivated power law relationship between grey thermal optical depth and atmospheric pressure. To verify the accuracy of our analytic treatment, we compare our model to more sophisticated full physics tools as applied to Venus, Earth, and a cloudfree Jupiter, thereby exploring a diversity of atmospheric conditions conditions. Next, we seek to better understand our analytic model by exploring how thermal radiative flux profiles respond to variations in key physical parameters, such as the total grey thermal optical depth of the atmosphere. Using energy balance arguments, we derive convective flux pro-files for the tropospheres of all Solar System worlds with thick atmospheres, and propose a scaling that enables inter-comparison of these profiles. Lastly, we use our analytic treatment to discuss the validity of other simple models of convective fluxes in planetary atmospheres. Our new expressions build on decades of analytic modeling exercises in planetary atmospheres, and further prove the utility of simple, generalized tools in comparative planetology studies.