General Circulation Model of a Cloudy Hot Jupiter

This model of an idealized hot Jupiter's atmosphere was originally published by Harada et al. (2021) (Fig. 6) to accompany a set of simulated high-resolution emission spectra that were computed directly from the model.

The color scale indicates the temperature at the vertical level in the atmosphere corresponding approximately to the IR photosphere pressure (~26 mbar). The gray-shaded area shows the integrated optical depth of clouds above the IR photosphere, with more opaque regions corresponding to thicker clouds. The red (and blue) contours show the net positive (and negative) line-of-sight velocities (in increments of 1 km/s) caused by atmospheric winds and the planet's rotation at the IR photosphere level. The black dot indicates the antistellar point and the black "x" indicates the substellar point. The subplot on the left-hand side shows the location of the planet in its orbit as seen from the perspective of a distant observer, indicated by the triangle.