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 ev...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoscientific Model Development 2023-10, Vol.16 (19), p.5601-5626
Main Authors: Sergeev, Denis E, Mayne, Nathan J, Bendall, Thomas, Boutle, Ian A, Brown, Alex, Kavcic, Iva, Kent, James, Kohary, Krisztian, Manners, James, Melvin, Thomas, Olivier, Enrico, Ragta, Lokesh K, Shipway, Ben, Wakelin, Jon, Wood, Nigel, Zerroukat, Mohamed
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angular momentum
Approximation
Atmosphere
Atmospheric circulation
Atmospheric circulation patterns
Atmospheric flows
Atmospheric models
Benchmarks
Climate
Climate change
Climate studies
Conservation
Convection
Earth
Extrasolar planets
General circulation models
Infrastructure
Intercomparison
Kinetic energy
Mathematical models
Modelling
Momentum
Numerical models
Planet detection
Recipes
Simulation methods
Terrestrial planets
Three dimensional flow
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1991-9603
1991-959X
1991-962X
1991-9603
1991-962X
DOI:10.5194/gmd-16-5601-2023