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| Paper: |
Signatures of Water Clouds on Exoplanets: Numerical Simulations. |
| Volume: |
450, Molecules in the Atmospheres of Extrasolar Planets |
| Page: |
101 |
| Authors: |
Karalidi, T.; Stam, D. M.; Keller, C. U. |
| Abstract: |
Clouds are of crucial importance for a planetary climate, because they
store atmospheric volatiles, and because they scatter and absorb
incident starlight and absorb, emit and scatter thermal radiation.
Consequently, the detection and characterization of clouds on a planet
can provide us with a wealth of information on the conditions on the
surface. Here, we present numerically simulated flux and polarization
spectra, from 0.3 μm to 1.0 μm, of starlight reflected by
Earth–like exoplanets that are covered by horizontally homogeneous
water clouds, for different cloud altitudes and particle sizes. Our
results show that the degree of polarization P is sensitive to the
particle size, in particular at phase angles between 30° and
∼50° and around 90°, and to the cloud top altitude,
in particular at wavelengths between 0.35 μm and 0.7
μm. The information in P should be easier to retrieve than that
in F. |
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