The Weather Forecast That You, Hopefully, Will Never Need!

Over the past thirty years astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars, worlds unlike anything in our Solar System. But how can we study the atmosphere of a planet we cannot visit, barely see, and that even our most powerful telescopes usually cannot resolve as a dot? By measuring tiny changes in starlight we can not only detect these planets, but also identify gases and clouds in their atmospheres. In my research I focus on two particular types of objects: hot Jupiters, gas giants heated to extreme temperatures by their parent star, and free-floating brown dwarfs, objects heavier than planets but too small to shine like stars. Together they reveal remarkable weather, including supersonic winds and clouds made from rock-forming minerals. In this talk, I will show how we combine astronomical observations with computer simulations to understand how these atmospheres work.

Making sense of these distant climates requires more than observations alone. We use atmospheric circulation models, originally developed for predicting weather on Earth, and adapt them to conditions far beyond anything found here. These simulations reproduce global winds and heat transport and allow us to create synthetic observations that telescopes can directly compare with measurements. By combining data and models we can infer atmospheric composition, understand how these worlds form and evolve, and place our own Solar System within the broader population of planets in our galaxy.

credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech