Atmospheric Physics

Project Description Despite four decades of planetary exploration, the physical and chemical processes responsible for the banded appearance of the giant planets remain mysterious. Observations from NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter, and ground-based microwave observations of the Ice Giants, have revealed that the belts and zones extend to great depths, well below the visible cloud tops. In addition, our long-term programme of ground-based infrared observations has shown that the belts and zones undergo dramatic variations on periodic timescales, evidence for non-seasonal atmospheric cycles on the the giant planets. This PhD project would utilise a suite of radiative transfer and spectral inversion tools to investigate the atmospheric circulation of the giants as a function of depth, latitude, and time, comparing groundand space-based observations to the predictions of radiative-climate models.