The <tt>THOR + HELIOS</tt> general circulation model: multiwavelength radiative transfer with accurate scattering by clouds/hazes

ABSTRACT General circulation models (GCMs) provide context for interpreting multiwavelength, multiphase data of the atmospheres tidally locked exoplanets. In current study, non-hydrostatic THOR GCM is coupled with HELIOS radiative transfer solver first time, supported by an equilibrium chemistry (FastChem), opacity calculator (HELIOS-K), and Mie scattering code (LX-MIE). To accurately treat radiation medium-sized to large aerosols/condensates, improved two-stream implemented within a time. Multiple using Thomas algorithm formulation flux solutions, which decreases computational time about 2 orders magnitude compared iterative method used in past versions HELIOS. As case we present four GCMs hot Jupiter WASP-43b, where compare temperature, velocity, entropy, streamfunction, as well synthetic spectra phase curves, runs regular versus isothermal non-isothermal layers. While global climate qualitatively robust, curves are sensitive these details. A + WASP-43b (horizontal resolution 4 deg on sphere 40 radial points) multiwavelength (30 k-table bins) running 3000 Earth days (864 000 time-steps) takes 19–26 d complete depending type GPU.