Thermal Infrared Emission Spectra of Terrestrial Exoplanets Influenced by Multi-layer Clouds

Kurzfassung

Clouds play an important role in the radiative transfer of planetary atmospheres: they are key elements of the climate system and influence the planet’s spectral appearance. Given the thousands of exoplanets discovered so far, including some dozens of Earth-sized exoplanets, the feasibility of remote sensing of exoplanet atmospheres is attracting increasing attention. Here we present a study of the thermal emission of cloud-covered Earth-like exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zone of F, G, K, and M-type stars. A line-by-line model for molecular absorption has been coupled to a discrete ordinate multiple scattering radiative transfer solver. Pressure, temperature, and molecular concentration profiles were taken from a consistent radiative-convective climate model including a parameterized cloud description (Kitzmann et al., A&A, 2010). The main focus of the current work is the impact of multi-layer clouds on emission spectra in the thermal infrared. The effects of low-level water clouds and high level ice clouds simultaneously on signatures of H2 O, CO2 , O3 , etc will be studied for various resolutions. Furthermore, comparisons with spectra resulting from a low-resolution code will be shown.