We have entered a new era of studying the physics of planetary atmospheres. Powered by new facilities like the James Webb Space Telescope and upcoming 30-meter class telescopes, we can observe exoplanet atmospheres in exquisite detail for the first time. With these measurements, we can test our understanding of the physics and chemistry of atmospheres in exotic environments: heating planets up to thousands of degrees or placing them around stars with very different properties. In the first part of my talk, I will discuss how my team and I are working on interpreting a plethora of observations using theoretical models. We are building new computational frameworks to infer planetary properties from spectra, leveraging technologies like GPUs and new machine learning algorithms to accelerate calculations, which in turn allows us to include more realistic physics. We have built some of the most widely used atmosphere and evolution models for cold Jupiter analogs in nearby stellar systems, which are being imaged for the first time with Webb. A long term focus of my work has been to understand the clouds on exoplanets: we find that worlds of many different masses and temperatures are enshrouded by clouds, changing their observable spectra. Just like on Earth, these clouds affect their climates, but unlike Earth, they are made of many different materials from rocks to salts to ices. I am proposing a significant interdisciplinary collaboration to investigate cloud physics broadly across planets from the solar system to exoplanets, applying several Earth-based models outside the Earth for the first time. As observations of exoplanet atmospheres reach greater maturity, the time is right for more robust collaborative work between Earth atmospheric scientists, solar system atmospheric scientists, and exoplanet atmospheric scientists like myself.
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