中国科学院上海天文台-地球物理和天体物理流体力学系列讲座

报告题目： Computing Clouds in Three-Dimensional Atmospheres

报告人： 李成 助理教授 (University of Michigan)

报告地点: 三楼大会议室

报告时间：2026年 7 月 16 日（周四） 上午15:00

报告摘要：

Clouds are among the most readily observable tracers of atmospheric dynamics on giant planets, from amateur observations to spacecraft measurements. Yet interpreting these observations remains challenging because cloud formation in hydrogen-dominated atmospheres involves poorly constrained microphysics and strong coupling between condensation, precipitation, latent heating, and atmospheric dynamics. Here, we present a GPU-accelerated thermochemical scheme for efficiently computing multi-species phase equilibrium, with extensions to disequilibrium chemical kinetics. The method is designed for three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of giant-planet atmospheres and enables self-consistent treatment of condensation, precipitation, re-evaporation, and associated latent-heating effects. Using these simulations, we examine the resulting spatial and vertical cloud distributions, focusing on their departures from one-dimensional equilibrium-condensation models and on the dynamical origin of cloud-coverage contrasts. Our results demonstrate a pathway toward statistically meaningful comparisons between cloud-resolving simulations and observations of giant-planet atmospheres.