Dr. Timothy E. Dowling is the PI for the Development of the EPIC Atmospheric Model with Radiative Transfer and Realistic Structure Applied to Jupiter and Saturn award. This 3 year award is sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the amount of $294,284. The EPIC Atmospheric Model was developed in the Comparative Planetology Laboratory (CPL), (http://louisville.edu/cpl), at the University of Louisville. This is a general circulation model (GCM) that simulates all the planetary atmospheres in the Solar System, and is the leading model for studies of the gas-giant atmospheres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and is used by NASA and researchers around the world.

Such models, GCMs, are organized into a dynamical core plus physics packages that deal with everything from rain and snow to turbulence to radiative transfer. This project develops a radiative transfer (RT) physics package for the EPIC model, with emphasis on Jupiter and Saturn. The idea is that the light from the Sun covers a large range of wavelengths, which interact differently with the participating molecules (greenhouse gases) in these atmospheres, most notably methane and ethane. Just like in the stratosphere of Earth, this drives "photochemistry" that heats the atmosphere and couples the dynamics of the winds to the distribution of the trace chemicals. On Earth, the primary focus is on ozone, because it heats the stratosphere and absorbs UV light that is harmful to the biosphere. For the gas giants, methane plays the role of ozone, heating the stratosphere and controlling the atmospheric structure. The overall goal of this research is to have one atmospheric model accurately simulate all the known atmospheres equally well; the CPL is a world leader in this area.

Dr. Thomas Greathouse of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), who is an expert on radiative transfer applied to the gas giant atmospheres, is a collaborator on this project. Dr. Dowling has had funding from this source continuously since 1991, three years at a time.