Exoplanets & Exomoons

Lightning Climatology of Exoplanets and Brown Dwarfs Guided by Solar System Data

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.EP
July 27, 2016
Filed under
Lightning Climatology of Exoplanets and Brown Dwarfs Guided by Solar System Data

Clouds form on extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs where lightning could occur. Lightning is a tracer of atmospheric convection, cloud formation and ionization processes as known from the Solar System, and may be significant for the formation of prebiotic molecules.

We study lightning climatology for the different atmospheric environments of Earth, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. We present lightning distribution maps for Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, and flash densities for these planets and Venus, based on optical and/or radio measurements from the WWLLN and STARNET radio networks, the LIS/OTD satellite instruments, the Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons and Venus Express spacecraft. We also present flash densities calculated for several phases of two volcano eruptions, Eyjafjallaj\”okull’s (2010) and Mt Redoubt’s (2009). We estimate lightning rates for sample, transiting and directly imaged extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs. Based on the large variety of exoplanets, six categories are suggested for which we use the lightning occurrence information from the Solar System. We examine lightning energy distributions for Earth, Jupiter and Saturn.

We discuss how strong stellar activity may support lightning activity. We provide a lower limit of the total number of flashes that might occur on transiting planets during their full transit as input for future studies. We find that volcanically very active planets might show the largest lightning flash densities. When applying flash densities of the large Saturnian storm from 2010/11, we find that the exoplanet HD 189733b would produce high lightning occurrence even during its short transit.

Gabriella Hodosán, Christiane Helling, Rubén Asensio-Torres, Irena Vorgul, Paul B. Rimmer
(Submitted on 29 Jun 2016)

Comments: 24 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph); Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:1606.09172 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1606.09172v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Gabriella Hodosán
[v1] Wed, 29 Jun 2016 16:08:19 GMT (3955kb,D)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.09172

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻