Aerosols and Chemistry in the Planetary Atmospheres

Citation

Zhang, Xi (2013) Aerosols and Chemistry in the Planetary Atmospheres. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/CS1E-F431. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:12072012-233847443

Abstract

This dissertation is devoted to studying aerosols and their roles in regulating chemistry, radiation, and dynamics of planetary atmospheres. In chapter I, we provided a fundamental mathematical basis for the quasi-equilibrium growth assumption, a well-accepted approach to representing formation of secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) in microphysical simulations in the Earth’s atmosphere. Our analytical work not only explains the quasi-equilibrium growth, which emerges as a limiting case in our theory, but also predicts the other types of condensational growth, confirmed by the recent laboratory and field experiments. In chapter II, we presented a new photochemical mechanism in which the evaporation of the aerosols composed of sulfuric acid or polysulfur on the nightside of Venus could provide a sulfur source above 90 km. Our model results imply the enhancements of sulfur oxides such as SO, SO₂, and SO₃. This is inconsistent with the previous model results but in agreement with the recent ground-based and spacecraft observations. In chapters III and IV, we developed a nonlinear optimization approach to retrieve the aerosol and cloud structure on Jupiter from the visible and ultraviolet images acquired by the Cassini spacecraft, combined with the ground-based near-infrared observations. We produced the first realistic spatial distribution of Jovian stratospheric aerosols in latitudes and altitudes. We also retrieved the stratospheric temperature and hydrocarbon species based on the mid-infrared spectra from the Cassini and Voyager spacecrafts. Based on the above information, the accurate and detailed maps of the instantaneous radiative forcing in Jovian stratosphere are obtained, revealing a significant heating effect from the polar dark aerosols in the high latitude region and therefore a strong modulation on the global meridional circulation in the stratosphere of Jupiter. In chapter V, we study the transport of passive tracers, such as aerosols, acetylene (C₂H₂) and ethane (C₂H₆) in the Jovian stratosphere, using both analytical and numerical approaches. We established several benchmark analytical solutions for the coupled photochemical-advective-diffusive system to understand its basic behaviors under different assumptions. A numerical two-dimensional chemical transport model is applied to Jupiter, and the effects of eddy mixing process and meridional circulation on the distributions of stratospheric species are discussed.

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