Abstract:

Zonal jets are a ubiquitous feature of planetary atmospheres, with all Solar System planetary atmospheres having strong zonal jets in their atmosphere. The zonal jets in the solar system vary in their characteristics between the planets. In addition to the Solar System's planets, in recent decades thousands of exoplanets were confirmed and motivated the study of the climate dependence on planetary parameters. In this talk, I will start with some motivation and overview of the observed zonal jets in and outside the Solar System. Following that I will present results from a seasonally varying idealized general circulation model, with an Earth-like configuration, in which we vary the obliquity, rotation rate, and orbital period. We find that there are distinct regimes for the the zonal jet's seasonal cycle across the parameter space. Some of the regimes have similarities to the observed jets on Mars and Titan, and others have no observed counterparts in the Solar system. These results can contribute to our understanding of the atmospheric dynamics on these terrestrial bodies, and help for the exploration and understanding of the dynamics on Earth-like exoplanets.