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The Atmosphere Model

The initial Uranus model will be provided by my advisor Mark Marley. His work is the first attempt at a self-consistent radiative-convective model for the atmosphere since that of Appleby in 1986. His is also the first to use Voyager data as boundary conditions. The model is based upon one derived for the atmosphere of Titan (McKay 1989). There are 42 plane-parallel layers spaced equally in log P from 2.5 bars to 20 bars. In its present state the model is essentially one-dimensional, but I will expand it into greater dimension by adding a meridional component and taking center-to-limb variations into account. Calculations take place in the thermal infrared over 56 spectral intervals in the thermal IR between 5.7 and 0.33 and 36 intervals in the reflected solar spectrum from 0.275 to 4.22 . These bandpasses will be modified to meet those of the filters use in the observational phase of the project. An atmospheric model is allowed to relax to radiative equilibrium until the net flux across each layer is zero. Layers with lapse rates greater than the adiabatic condition are deemed to be convective. The equation of radiative transfer is then solved for in each band until radiative equilibrium is reached.



Charles Walter
Thu May 18 17:57:23 MDT 1995