Dust Ablation on the Giant Planets: Consequences for Stratospheric Photochemistry.

ABSTRACT: Ablation of interplanetary dust supplies oxygen to the upper atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Using recent dynamical model predictions for the dust influx rates to the giant planets (Poppe, A.R. et al. [2016], Icarus 264, 369), we calculate the ablation profiles and investigate the subsequent coupled oxygen-hydrocarbon neutral photochemistry in the stratospheres of these planets. We find that dust grains from the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, Jupiter-family comets, and Oort-cloud comets supply an effective oxygen influx rate of 1.0 - 0.7 + 2.2 × 10 7 O atoms cm^-2 s^-1 to Jupiter, 7.4 - 5.1 + 16 × 10 4 cm^-2 s^-1 to Saturn, 8.9 - 6.1 + 19 × 10 4 cm^-2 s^-1 to Uranus, and 7.5 - 5.1 + 16 × 10 5 cm

SUBMITTER: Moses JI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6398964 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature