Print Email Facebook Twitter The relation between clouds and surface water on exoplanets Title The relation between clouds and surface water on exoplanets Author Mettepenningen, Gytha (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering) Contributor Schrama, Ernst (mentor) Menicucci, A. (graduation committee) Trees, V.J.H. (graduation committee) Stam, D.M. (graduation committee) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Programme Aerospace Engineering Date 2022-08-25 Abstract To answer the question of habitability of other planets, it is crucial to find liquid water. As a planet’s surface might be difficult to characterise through observations, the observation of cloud composition and coverage could possibly reveal the presence of large bodies of surface water. Climate code SPEEDY is used to investigate relations between cloud patterns on rocky exoplanets with oceans for various planet parameters, such as obliquity and incident stellar flux, and the observable signals of such exoplanets are computed. SPEEDY was chosen for the modelling of rocky exoplanets, because of its speed, since our aim is to run simulations for various planet parameters, and its flexibility, since it allows the adaptation of planet properties such as the presence and distribution of continents. The planet’s rotational period is found to have the most obvious influence on the cloud pattern: with increasing rotational speed, bands of clouds form, parallel to the equator, with the number of bands increasing with the rotational speed. The total flux and polarisation of starlight that is reflected by the planets with cloud bands as functions of the wavelength and the planetary phase angle are computed. Also the influence of the integration time of the observations on the reflected light signals is studied. Our main recommendation for further research is to broaden the applicability of SPEEDY for exoplanet research by first gaining more insight into the parametrisations and then by adapting them where necessary to allow wider parameter settings. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:45067d54-2f04-44cd-ba42-fa5679f65e36 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights © 2022 Gytha Mettepenningen Files PDF Thesis.pdf 18.49 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:45067d54-2f04-44cd-ba42-fa5679f65e36/datastream/OBJ/view