On the (anticipated) diversity of terrestrial planet atmospheres

Jérémy Leconte (1, 2) , François Forget (2) , H. Lammer (3)

1 CITA, University of Toronto, 60st St George Street, Toronto, ON M5S3H8, Canada
2 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
3 IWF - Space Research Institute of Austrian Academy of Sciences

On our way toward the characterization of smaller and more temperate planets, missions dedicated to the spectroscopic observation of exoplanets will teach us about the wide diversity of classes of planetary atmospheres, many of them probably having no equivalent in the Solar System. But what kind of atmospheres can we expect? To start answering this question, many theoretical studies have tried to understand and model the various processes controlling the formation and evolution of planetary atmospheres, with some success in the Solar System. Here, we shortly review these processes and we try to give an idea of the various type of atmospheres that these processes can create. As will be made clear, current atmosphere evolution models have many shortcomings yet, and need heavy calibrations. With that in mind, we will thus discuss how observations with a mission similar to EChO would help us unravel the link between a planet's environment and its atmosphere. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Domains: Ocean, Atmosphere

Jérémy Leconte, François Forget, H. Lammer. On the (anticipated) diversity of terrestrial planet atmospheres. Experimental Astronomy, 2014, july, ⟨10.1007/s10686-014-9403-4⟩. ⟨hal-01087278⟩