Motivation

Exoplanets offer an unprecedented opportunity to put our understanding of Solar System in
context. Hot Jupiters (short-period gas giants) are the first discovered and most studied class of
exoplanets. They are expected to be tidally-locked (always facing the host star with the same side)
and exhibit remarkable thermal and chemical variations across the permanent dayside and nightside.
However, exoplanet models are generally not up to date to address this.
In this project, we are motivated to bridge this gap by testing simplified chemical schemes that are computationally feasible to couple to a 3-D GCM.
We format a 3-D GCM chemistry benchmark scheme for hot Jupiters for the first time. We are aiming to standardize the protocol of model validation where we optimize the trade-off between
accuracy and efficiency.