DR. PETER GAO
EARTH AND PLANETS LABORATORY
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE
Welcome to my site! I am a staff scientist in the Earth and Planets Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. My primary research interest is the physics and chemistry of planetary atmospheres within and beyond the Solar System and what they can tell us about planetary origins and habitability. Learn more about my research and areas of study below.
ABOUT ME
I received my PhD in Planetary Science from Caltech, where I worked on modeling aerosols and chemistry in the atmospheres of Venus, Mars, Titan, and Pluto, and the atmospheric evolution of terrestrial worlds orbiting M dwarf stars. After graduation, I spent one year at NASA Ames Research Center as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, three years at UC Berkeley as a 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow, and one year at UC Santa Cruz as a NHFP Sagan Fellow. During these postdoc years I focused on understanding aerosols in exoplanet and brown dwarf atmospheres.
Check out my CV and Google Scholar Profile for more information:
AREAS OF STUDY
SOLAR SYSTEMÂ
ATMOSPHERES
Detailed exploration of the atmospheres of Solar System bodies have allowed for unsurpassed discoveries and surprises. I have led and been a part of several investigations into the current unsolved mysteries of these familiar places, including the sulfuric acid clouds of Venus, the puzzling presence of methane on Mars, the complex chemistry of Titan, and the ethereal hazes of Pluto.
EXOPLANET & BROWN DWARF ATMOSPHERES
The quest to characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets and brown dwarfs has accelerated in recent years thanks to new observing strategies and methods of analysis. In support of the deluge of data from current and future telescopes, I have conducted several modeling studies that apply what we have learned about photochemistry and cloud physics in the Solar System to these distant worlds.
MODELS
CARMA
The Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmospheres (CARMA) is a 1D forward model that calculates the size distribution of aerosol particles in a planetary atmosphere. The model calculates rates of particle nucleation (homogeneous and heterogeneous), condensational growth, coagulation, evaporation, sedimentation, advection, and diffusion from first principles (e.g. Pruppacher & Klett 1978) and balances these rates to arrive at the equilibrium particle distribution. The size distribution is described by bins instead of a parameterized shape, such as the lognormal distribution.
CARMA was originally developed by Turco et al. (1979) and Toon et al. (1979) and has undergone several updates (e.g. Jacobson et al. 1994, Ackerman et al. 1995). While it has been mostly used to simulate Earth aerosol processes, it has been extended to Solar System atmospheres as well.
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I use CARMA to generate aerosol size distributions in planetary atmospheres for a variety of investigations. I have used CARMA to simulate the sulfuric acid clouds of Venus to understand why its upper haze is variable, and the hydrocarbon hazes of Pluto to explain observations by New Horizons. I have now developed a version of CARMA that can be applied to warm and hot exoplanet atmospheres, which involves including a host of higher temperature condensates.
KINETICS
The Caltech/JPL 1D Photochemical and Transport Model (KINETICS) calculates the abundance profiles of chemical species in a planetary atmosphere in response to (1) photolysis of species by high energy photons from the host star, (2) thermochemical reactions between species, (3) transport by diffusion and advection, and (4) upward and downward fluxes of chemical species from below and above the model domain (e.g. volcanic emission). It can be applied to any planetary atmosphere and has a library of more than 1,000 chemical species and 20,000 reactions.
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KINETICS was originally developed by Allen et al. (1981) and has since been applied to numerous planetary atmospheric studies covering every atmosphere in the Solar System, exoplanet atmospheres, and several exospheres of giant planet icy satellites.
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I use KINETICS to explore how Solar System analogs evolve when they are in orbit of other stars. In particular, terrestrial worlds around M dwarfs have captivated our imaginations due to their abundance and relative ease of characterization. I have investigated how the atmospheres of Mars-like and Titan-like planets would fare around an M dwarf. I now focus on Venus, as Venus-like worlds may make up a large fraction of planets discovered by the TESS mission. ​
CONTACT ME
Thank you for your interest in my research! Feel free to contact me using the form below, or via email displayed at the top of the site. I would love to hear from you!
Peter Gao
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
University of California, Santa Cruz
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