Abstract

Evidence of clouds in hot-Jupiter atmospheres spans from variability of and offsets in planetary phase curves, to muted absorption features in transmission spectra. The latter can be attributed to the opaque nature of cloud condensate decks and/or haze, and presents challenges for atmospheric characterisation. To further explore the role condensate clouds play in these extreme environments, we couple to the UK Met Office’s General Circulation Model both a microphysical and a simple parameterised cloud formation scheme to investigate cloud formation, structure, composition and evolution across cloud modelling paradigms. In this talk, I will focus on the importance of including cloud radiative feedback for obtaining the true atmospheric thermal structure, and I present transmission and emission spectra, albedos and phase curves from our 3D radiatively active simulations of HD 209458b.