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Overcast mornings and clear evenings in hot Jupiter exoplanet atmospheres

T0 review · 3 major / 5 minor · reviewed 2026-08-06 · deepseek-v4-flash

Pith's one-line read Three hot Jupiters show overcast mornings and clear evenings in transit spectra.

desk verdict Solid limb-resolved detections of three hot Jupiters with muted egress limbs, but the paper's morning/evening labels are internally contradictory and the population-level fits are thin. read the letter →

arxiv 2507.15854 v1 pith:6X5HWPPN submitted 2025-07-21 astro-ph.EP

classification astro-ph.EP
keywords hotJupitersexoplanetatmospherestransmissionspectroscopylimbasymmetryaerosolscloudsJWSTNIRISS/SOSSatmosphericretrieval
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

This paper analyzes JWST NIRISS/SOSS transit spectra of nine hot Jupiters, separating the signal from the leading (morning) and trailing (evening) limbs during ingress and egress. It finds that three planets—WASP-39 b, WASP-94 Ab, and WASP-17 b—show a >5-sigma difference in the strength of the 1.4 micron water feature between limbs, with muted water absorption on the morning limb and clear water features on the evening limb. The authors argue that this asymmetry requires high-altitude aerosols (at 0.1 to 0.01 mbar) on the morning limb that are removed by the evening limb on timescales of about a day, with downwelling flow or dayside cloud evaporation as plausible mechanisms. If true, this means limb-averaged spectra of these planets are biased: averaging a muted morning limb with a clear evening limb suppresses spectral features, mimicking a high-mean-molecular-weight atmosphere, inflating inferred metallicity by up to 2 dex, and underestimating limb temperatures by as much as half. The paper also proposes an empirical boundary in temperature-gravity space, called the 'asymmetry horizon,' where inhomogeneous aerosol coverage begins to emerge, and introduces the Limb Spectroscopy Metric to predict limb spectral feature size.

What carries the argument

The central object is the morning and evening limb transit spectrum, obtained by fitting the transit light curve with a two-semicircle model (Catwoman) that assigns separate radii to the leading and trailing limbs. The key quantitative index is $A_H$, the difference between the mean transit depth in a baseline band (0.9–1.3 microns) and in the 1.4 micron water band (1.35–1.5 microns), expressed in units of atmospheric scale height; the evening-minus-morning difference $\delta A_H$ isolates the limb asymmetry. The authors also use a 1D PICASO/VIRGA forward-model grid with two limb temperature profiles to show that cloud condensation and evaporation cycling of MgSiO$_3$ and Na$_2$S/MnS can reproduce the double-peaked trend in $\delta A_H$ with temperature, and they derive a 2D sigmoid fit in equilibrium temperature versus surface gravity that defines the empirical 'asymmetry horizon.'

What would settle it

A limb-resolved retrieval that fits both the 1.4 micron and the 2.5 micron water bands, plus the 8–10 micron silicate region, on WASP-39 b or WASP-94 Ab would distinguish aerosols from a genuine water-abundance gradient: a chemical gradient would mute all water bands proportionally without strong short-wavelength slope, whereas high-altitude aerosols would produce a pronounced blueward continuum slope and wavelength-dependent band suppression. Alternatively, full-physics GCMs with coupled cloud microphysics that reproduce the observed $\delta A_H$ of the three planets without invoking downwelling or dayside evaporation would falsify the proposed removal timescale argument.

Watch

Extended reading notes

Core claim

The discovery is that heterogeneous aerosol coverage between the morning and evening limbs is common among hot Jupiters, and that for at least three of the nine planets studied the morning limb is heavily muted by high-altitude aerosols while the evening limb is clear. The measurement is the limb water index $A_H$, the relative transit depth inside versus outside the 1.4 micron water band, normalized by atmospheric scale height. The three planets with the largest evening-minus-morning difference in $A_H$—WASP-39 b, WASP-94 Ab, and WASP-17 b—all show muted morning limbs and clear evening limbs, an asymmetry that is confirmed by direct comparison of in-water-band and out-of-water-band light curves where egress residuals are systematically lower than ingress residuals. Because water vapor is expected to be uniformly abundant across the limbs at these temperatures, the muted morning water feature is interpreted as the signature of high-altitude aerosols on the morning limb. The consequence for atmospheric characterization is that ignoring this asymmetry when retrieving a limb-averaged spectrum biases the inferred scale height: the featureless morning limb dilutes the molecular features of the clear evening limb, which is degenerate with a smaller scale height, inflating inferred metallicity and lowering inferred temperature.

Load-bearing premise

The central reading assumes that water vapor has the same abundance on the morning and evening limbs, so the muted morning water feature must come from aerosols; if the cooler morning limb simply holds less gaseous water, the asymmetry would be real but the high-altitude aerosol mechanism would not follow.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

  • Limb-averaged retrievals of hot Jupiters with large $\delta A_H$ will systematically overestimate metallicity and underestimate temperature unless the two limbs are modeled separately.
  • Future JWST observations can use the empirically calibrated Limb Spectroscopy Metric to predict whether a given planet will yield limb spectra precise enough to measure morning-evening asymmetry to one scale height.
  • If the asymmetry horizon is real, planets on the hot, low-gravity side of the boundary are expected to show muted-morning/clear-evening spectra, while cooler or higher-gravity planets should show more homogeneous aerosol coverage.
  • The proposed removal mechanisms—downwelling flow and dayside cloud evaporation—imply that the morning limb aerosol population is dominated by nightside condensate clouds rather than dayside photochemical haze, since haze would be advected to the evening limb first.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The biasing effect quantified here likely extends beyond hot Jupiters to any tidally locked exoplanet with terminator temperature contrasts, including sub-Neptunes and temperate rocky planets, where the same cloud condensation-line crossing could produce cloudy mornings and clear evenings; the paper notes this possibility but leaves it unquantified.
  • A testable extension would be to compare limb-resolved spectra at longer wavelengths (1.8 and 2.5 micron water bands, and 8–10 micron silicate features), since different aerosol compositions and particle sizes would affect those bands differently; the paper identifies this as a needed future observation.
  • The connection between the 1300 K clearing of MgSiO$_3$ clouds and the L/T transition in brown dwarfs suggests a shared silicate cloud dissipation mechanism, which could be tested by comparing limb-resolved spectra of transiting brown dwarfs and hot Jupiters across that temperature range.
  • The analytical downwelling timescale argument predicts that $\delta A_H$ should increase monotonically with temperature, whereas the evaporation mechanism predicts a sawtooth pattern; measuring $\delta A_H$ for a larger sample across a wide temperature range could observationally separate the two mechanisms, a distinction the paper explicitly flags as the key next test.
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Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, and a circularity audit.

Referee Report

3 major / 5 minor

Summary. The paper presents a uniform re-analysis of archival JWST NIRISS/SOSS transit light curves for nine hot Jupiters, fitting two-semicircle transit models to isolate the spectra of the two planetary limbs. A water-band index A_H is defined in units of atmospheric scale height, and the paper reports that WASP-39 b, WASP-94 Ab, and WASP-17 b show >5σ differences between morning and evening limbs, with muted morning limbs attributed to high-altitude (0.1–0.01 mbar) aerosols and clear evening limbs. The authors propose an empirical 'asymmetry horizon' in equilibrium-temperature versus surface-gravity space, use 1D PICASO/VIRGA models to interpret the trends, quantify how limb averaging can bias retrieval results, and introduce the Limb Spectroscopy Metric (LSM) for planning future observations.

Significance. If the central measurement is correct, this is a valuable population-level contribution: it provides limb-resolved spectra for nine planets using a homogeneous reduction, includes an independent NIRSpec PRISM check for WASP-39 b, and demonstrates that the limb-water index is robust to mid-transit-time shifts. The warning that unresolved limb asymmetry can bias limb-averaged retrievals toward higher metallicity and lower temperature is practically important and is tied to an existing analytic result (Line & Parmentier 2016). The main weakness is that the physical interpretation depends on a morning/evening convention that is stated inconsistently, and the proposed 'asymmetry horizon' is a 4-parameter fit to only 9 data points.

major comments (3)
  1. [§2.1 vs §2.3.1, Table 2, Figure 3] The morning/evening limb labels are internally contradictory and this is load-bearing for the paper's headline. Section 2.1 defines the leading limb (the one entering during ingress) as the morning limb and the trailing/egress limb as the evening limb. Section 2.3.1, however, states that the fitted radii are 'converted back to rp1 (Evening) and rp2 (Morning)'. In the Catwoman model (Espinoza & Jones 2021), rp1 is the radius of the first limb to enter transit and rp2 is the radius of the last limb to exit; therefore the analysis labels the ingress limb as Evening and the egress limb as Morning, the opposite of Section 2.1. This is not a semantic quibble: Figure 3 shows lower egress residuals for the three >5σ planets, and Table 2 labels those muted egress limbs as Morning. If Section 2.1's definition were followed, the same detections would instead be clear mornings and muted evenings, which would invert the title, the aerosol-transport narrative, and the interpretation in Sections 3.1–3.3. The empirical asymmetry signal may be robust, but the physical conclusions currently rest on a convention that the paper states in contradictory ways. The authors must reconcile the text with the Catwoman convention (or vice versa) and re-check all labels, figures, and conclusions.
  2. [§2.4.1, Eq. (1), Figure 7] The 'asymmetry horizon' is not an independent empirical boundary but a 4-parameter sigmoid fit to the same nine δA_H values it is then used to demarcate. With only three planets showing strong asymmetry and with the fitted parameter k = 579^{+291}_{-307}, the 1σ uncertainty region in Figure 7 is necessarily broad, and no out-of-sample or leave-one-out test is reported. As presented, the horizon is a heuristic curve rather than a falsifiable prediction. I recommend re-labeling it as a tentative trend and providing a cross-validation test or a clear statement of how future limb-spectra measurements could falsify the proposed boundary.
  3. [§2.5, Figure 8, §3.3.3] The claim that the data require 'at least two distinct cloud populations' and the associated L/T-transition analogy are based on a three-parameter grid search over PICASO/VIRGA models with no reported goodness-of-fit, uncertainty estimates, or sensitivity to the fixed assumptions (Kzz = 10^10 cm²/s, 3× solar metallicity, solar C/O, chosen cloud species). Figure 8 shows qualitative tracks that appear to match the data, but the conclusion that a second cloud population is 'needed' is not quantitatively demonstrated. The caveats in Section 3.3.6 are appropriate, but the double-peak interpretation should be framed as one possible model-dependent explanation rather than a data-supported finding.
minor comments (5)
  1. [§3.3.1] The citation to 'Owen & Murray-Clay 2025 submitted' appears in the text but is not present in the reference list; please add the reference or remove the citation.
  2. [§3.3.3] The phrase 'This seemly sudden clearing up' should read 'This seemingly sudden clearing up'.
  3. [§5, Eqs. (9)–(10)] The definition of LSM_empirical would benefit from an explicit statement of the units and of the power-law convention used: is it LSM_empirical = (1/0.27) × LSM^{-1.46}? The current typesetting is ambiguous.
  4. [Throughout] Planet names are inconsistently hyphenated (e.g., 'WASP 39 b' versus 'WASP-39 b'); please standardize.
  5. [Figure 3] The teal one-circle and black two-semicircle model curves are difficult to distinguish in the middle panels; separate panels or different line styles would make the comparison clearer.

Circularity Check

3 steps flagged · score 5.0 of 10

Partial circularity: the 'muted morning' headline is convention-dependent because §2.1 and §2.3.1 assign 'morning' to opposite limbs, and the 'asymmetry horizon' and LSM_empirical are fitted to the same data they then demarcate or predict; the underlying limb-asymmetry measurement is independent.

  1. other [Section 2.1 vs Section 2.3.1 (Catwoman reparameterization); results in Figure 3 and Table 2]
    "Section 2.1: 'the leading limb, which enters during ingress, is expected to be cooler as it receives air from the planet's nightside... Based on this paradigm, the leading and trailing limbs are described as the morning and evening limbs, respectively.' Section 2.3.1: 'The best fit spectroscopic Rp and ∆ Rp are then converted back to rp1 (Evening) and rp2 (Morning).'"

    Section 2.1 defines the leading (ingress) limb as morning, but Section 2.3.1 converts the fitted radii 'back to rp1 (Evening) and rp2 (Morning)'; in the Catwoman model (Espinoza & Jones 2021, cited here) rp1 is the first (ingress) limb and rp2 the last (egress) limb, so the analysis names the egress/trailing limb 'morning' — the opposite of Section 2.1. Figure 3 and Table 2 then identify the muted limb with 'Morning', so 'morning limbs are muted' restates the adopted labeling rather than a finding about Section 2.1's geometrically defined morning limb; under Section 2.1's definition the same data would read 'clear mornings, muted evenings', inverting the title and the Section 3 aerosol-transport narrative.

  2. fitted input called prediction [Section 2.4.1, Equation (1), Figure 7; echoed in Abstract and Section 6 finding (4)]
    "To further quantify this transition empirically, we fitted a 2-dimensional sigmoid function to the data: δAH = z/(1+e^(−k(m·Teq−logg+c)))... Based on the fitted values, we plotted the contour line where the function reaches half of its maximum value... We propose an empirically derived 'asymmetry horizon' in the Teq and logg parameter space. This line marks the transition where hot Jupiter atmospheres are expected to shift from homogeneous aerosol coverage to having clearer evening limbs than morning limbs."

    The 'asymmetry horizon' is the half-maximum contour of a four-parameter sigmoid fitted to the same nine δA_H measurements whose separation it is claimed to 'mark' or demarcate. The boundary is entirely defined by the fit to these data; no independent sample or out-of-sample test is given, so the statement that the line 'marks the transition where hot Jupiter atmospheres are expected to shift from homogeneous aerosol coverage to having clearer evening limbs than morning limbs' restates the fitted contour. The paper is explicit that the line is 'empirically derived', which makes this an honest calibration rather than a fabricated prediction, but the 'hypothesis' has no content beyond the fit, and its application to future planets is statistically forced by the same nine points it was fit to.

1 more flagged steps
  1. fitted input called prediction [Section 5, Equations (7)-(10), Figure 12]
    "we measured LSM for all SOSS datasets and fitted a power law to LSM versus measured δAH error bar (δAH err) sizes (Figure 12). Based on this empirically determined relationship, we rescale LSM to LSM empirical: LSMempirical = 1/0.27 * LSM^−1.46... LSMempirical = 1 would then correspond to a measured δAH err of 1H and LSM empirical is inverse to δAH err: dAH err (H) = 1/LSMempirical"

    The coefficients (0.27, −1.46) come from a power-law fit to the measured δA_H errors of the same nine SOSS planets, after which LSM_empirical is defined so that δA_H err = 1/LSM_empirical. On the calibration set this inverse relation is true by construction — the metric was defined as the reciprocal of the fitted error — so the claim that LSM_empirical 'is inverse to δAH error' is a tautology for the sample it was derived from, not a prediction. The paper then promotes LSM_empirical as a predictive guiding metric ('~105 targets... with LSM empirical >1') for future observations, extrapolating the in-sample fit to new planets. The raw LSM of Eq. (7) is a genuine planet-parameter predictor; the circular part is the rescaling that embeds the measured errors it later claims to predict.

full rationale

The paper's central measurement is self-contained: ΔA_H is derived from JWST NIRISS/SOSS light curves fit with Catwoman's two-semicircle model (§2.3.1), with the asymmetric signal checked independently through band-difference residuals (§2.3.2, Fig. 3) and cross-instrument verification against NIRSpec PRISM (§2.3.3, Fig. 4). The retrieval-bias quantification (§4) applies the externally published closed-form relation of Line & Parmentier 2016 to the measured f≈1/2 morning-evening contrast and is not circular. Self-citations (Fu et al. 2024 for planet parameters, Mukherjee et al. 2025 for the companion WASP-94 Ab retrieval, Mukherjee et al. 2023 for PICASO) are real, reproducible tools or companion analyses and are not load-bearing. However, three interpretive layers partially reduce to their inputs. (1) The headline 'overcast mornings and clear evenings' is anchored to a limb-naming convention stated contradictorily: §2.1 defines the leading (ingress) limb as morning, while §2.3.1 assigns the label 'Evening' to the Catwoman ingress parameter rp1 and 'Morning' to the egress-side rp2; Figure 3 and Table 2 then identify the muted limb with 'Morning.' The empirical asymmetry is real, but which physical limb is called 'morning' — and hence the aerosol-transport narrative and title — depends on which of the two contradictory conventions is used; under §2.1 the same data would read 'muted evenings.' (2) The 'asymmetry horizon' (Eq. 1) is a 2D sigmoid fit to the same nine δA_H values whose separation it then 'marks'; its boundary is a contour of that fit, so the hypothesized transition has no out-of-sample content. (3) LSM_empirical (Eqs. 9–10) is a power-law fit to the measured δA_H errors of the same nine SOSS datasets, defined so that δA_H err = 1/LSM_empirical; on the calibration sample this relation is true by construction, and the ~105-target 'prediction' is an extrapolation of that fit. The paper is transparent that these are empirical fits, which mitigates, but does not remove, the reduction: the limb-asymmetry measurements are genuine, while several of the paper's 'hypotheses' and 'metrics' are fit-dressed-as-predictions of the very data from which they were derived.

Assumptions & free parameters 4 free parameters · 5 assumptions · 1 invented entities

The central limb detections rely on standard assumptions (tidal locking, super-rotating jet orientation, two-semicircle transit model). The interpretive layers add fitted parameters: the sigmoid horizon, the LSM power law, and the PICASO grid parameters. No new physical entities are required beyond the empirical 'asymmetry horizon' construct.

free parameters (4)
  • Asymmetry horizon sigmoid parameters (m, c, z, k) = m=0.0009, c=1.6417, z=2.0337, k=579.21
    Fit to delta-AH vs Teq, logg for the nine planets (Eq. 1); defines the proposed boundary.
  • LSM empirical power law coefficients (scale, exponent) = scale=1/0.27, exponent=-1.46
    Power law fit to measured delta-AH error vs computed LSM for nine SOSS datasets (Eq. 9), used to rescale LSM into LSM_empirical.
  • PICASO grid parameters (slope, log10(fsed), Toff) = slope=0.66, log10(fsed)=-2.6, Toff=1200 K
    Grid search fit to match morning/evening AH tracks (Section 2.5); used to argue for two cloud populations and MgSiO3 dissipation.
  • Assumed Kzz = 1e10 cm2/s
    Fixed vertical eddy diffusion coefficient in VIRGA cloud model; controls particle sizes and vertical extent; not fitted but an assumed input.
assumptions (5)
  • domain assumption Tidally locked hot Jupiters have leading limb cooler (morning) and trailing limb warmer (evening).
    Section 2.1; used to label all morning/evening spectra.
  • domain assumption Water vapor abundance is uniform between the two limbs at 800-1700 K.
    Section 3.2; needed to attribute muted morning features to aerosols rather than chemistry.
  • domain assumption Catwoman two-semicircle model plus differential light-curve analysis isolates wavelength-dependent limb opacity differences.
    Section 2.3; underlies A_H measurement.
  • domain assumption PICASO/VIRGA parameterized cloud model captures the relevant aerosol physics.
    Section 2.5; used to infer cloud species and pressure levels.
  • domain assumption Line & Parmentier 2016 Eq. 10 relates terminator cloud fraction f to spectral slope.
    Used for the 2 dex and half-temperature bias numbers.
invented entities (1)
  • Asymmetry horizon
    purpose: Empirical boundary in Teq-logg space marking transition from homogeneous to inhomogeneous limb aerosol coverage
    Section 2.4.1; fitted to the nine-planet sample and not yet tested on independent data.

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Cite this review

Pith. "Pith review of Overcast mornings and clear evenings in hot Jupiter exoplanet atmospheres." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/6X5HWPPN

@misc{pith2026250715854,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: Overcast mornings and clear evenings in hot Jupiter exoplanet atmospheres},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/6X5HWPPN}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:2507.15854}
}
abstract

Aerosols is an old topic in the young field of exoplanet atmospheres. Understanding what they are, how they form, and where they go has long provided a fertile playground for theorists. For observers, however, aerosols have been a multi-decade migraine, as their chronic presence hides atmospheric features. For hot Jupiters, the large day-night temperature contrast drives inhomogeneous thermal structures and aerosol distribution, leading to different limb properties probed by transit spectra. We present JWST NIRISS/SOSS spectra of morning and evening limbs for nine gas giants with equilibrium temperatures of ~800-1700 K. By measuring feature size of the 1.4 $\mu$m water band for both limbs, we found three planets (WASP-39 b, WASP-94 Ab, and WASP-17 b) show prominent ($>$5$\sigma$) limb-limb atmospheric opacity difference with muted morning and clear evening limbs. The heavily muted water features on morning limbs indicate high-altitude (0.1 to 0.01 mbar) aerosols. To simultaneously have clear evening limbs requires processes with timescales ($\sim$day) comparable to advection to remove these lofted grains, and we found that both downwelling flow and dayside cloud evaporation could be plausible mechanisms. We hypothesize an empirical boundary--termed the "asymmetry horizon"--in temperature-gravity space that marks the transition where inhomogeneous aerosol coverage begins to emerge. Heterogeneous aerosol coverage is common among hot Jupiters. If unrecognized, limb averaging suppresses spectral features, mimicking high-mean-molecular-weight atmospheres, inflating inferred metallicity by up to 2 dex, and underestimating limb temperatures by as much as half. Finally, we introduce the Limb Spectroscopy Metric (LSM) to predict limb spectral feature size based on planet parameters.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2507.15854 by the authors.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Diagram illustrating the transit geometry with corresponding morning (blue), evening (red), and combined (grey) limb signals in the transit light curve. is anticipated to be warmer due to air circulation from the hotter dayside. Based on this paradigm, the lead￾ing and trailing limbs are described as the morning and evening limbs, respectively ( [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p002_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. The morning (blue) and evening (red) limb spectra for the nine-planet sample used in this study. We normalize the spectra by their corresponding atmospheric scale heights (H) and apply a 13 H offset between planets, which are sorted by temperature. The water opacity is shown at the bottom. The vertical gray (0.9-1.3 µm) and light blue (1.35-1.5 µm) shaded areas represent the baseline and 1.4 µm water band regions, r… view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Transit light curves from inside the 1.4 µm water band versus the outside baseline are shown in the top panels for each of the nine planets. The differences between the two light curves are shown in the middle panels. This direct empirical comparison visualizes the wavelength-dependent asymmetric signals in the transit light curves. Residuals (Red) between two bands should be symmetric around ingress and egress if t… view at source ↗
Figures from the paper (10 more)
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Comparison between morning and evening spec￾tra for WASP-39 b using NIRISS/SOSS (This work) versus NIRSpec PRISM (This work) (Top panel). Comparison be￾tween NIRSpec PRISM (This work) evening (middle panel) and morning (bottom panel) limbs spectra to three reduc￾tions …
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: The top row shows the measured AH for the morning and evening limbs for each planet versus planet equilibrium temperature (left) and surface gravity (right). The bottom row shows the evening-morning difference (δAH) for each planet. Neither planet temperature nor gravi…
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: The measured δAH for each planet in planet equi￾librium temperature versus surface gravity space. Planets with high δAH appear to cluster around the bottom right of the parameter space. We propose the asymmetry hori￾zon (grey line), which outlines the transition region…
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: The top row shows the measured AH for the morning and evening limbs for each planet versus planet equilibrium temperature with best-fit picaso model tracks overplotted (See [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_8.png]
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: Calculated total fall time from 0.01 to 1 mbar as a function of particle size based on V. Parmentier et al. (2013) for two temperatures and surface gravity. The effect of stellar radiation pressure is estimated by scaling up the gravity term based on β as a function of…
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: Day-night temperature difference is the main driver for large-scale flows on hot Jupiter atmospheres. We assumed two empirically motivated (T. D. Komacek et al. 2017) day-night ∆T versus Teq correlation (top panel) and then derived the expected vertical wind speeds (s…
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: The muted morning and clear evening limbs can mimic a higher metallicity and/or cooler uniform limb. Based on equation 10 from (M. R. Line & V. Parmentier 2016), we calculated the biased metallicity and temperature as functions of their respective true values in 5 cas…
Figure 12
Figure 12. Figure 12: We fitted a power law function to the measured δAH error and calculated LSM values based on the nine plan￾ets in this work. Then we defined LSMempirical so it scales inversely to δAH error. LSMempirical is an empirically-derived index based on the JWST SOSS datasets a…
Figure 13
Figure 13. Figure 13: All known transiting exoplanets (grey) to date and the 105 planets (color) with LSMempirical >1. and surface gravity. Based on the observed AH and δAH, we have the following key findings: (1) Observed muted morning limbs and clear evening limbs require atmospheric pro…
Figure 14
Figure 14. Figure 14: The scale height normalized 1D forward model grid for morning and evening limbs as shown in the top left panel of [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p018_14.png]

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Forward citations

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