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arXiv · 2608.11881

Chemical Tracers for 3D Atmospheric Asymmetries on WASP-69 b

Nidhi Bangera·Ludmila Carone·Vikas Soni·Kenneth Goodis Gordon·Luca Fossati·Helena Lecoq-Molinos·Paul B. Rimmer·Peter Woitke·Christiane Helling
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Abstract

Warm giant exoplanets exhibit strong three-dimensional temperature contrasts that can significantly alter atmospheric chemistry through quenching and photochemistry, yet transmission spectra are commonly interpreted using one-dimensional, limb-averaged models. Such simplifications may bias inferred atmospheric properties, particularly metallicity and C/O ratio. In this work we investigate the relative influence of atmospheric composition and three-dimensional thermal structure on atmospheric chemistry and transmission spectra using WASP-69b as a test case. WASP-69b is a ~900K warm Saturn, residing in a thermal regime especially sensitive to disequilibrium chemistry. We use three-dimensional general circulation model derived pressure-temperature profiles as inputs for a one-dimensional photochemical-kinetics model to resolve longitudinal and latitudinal chemical asymmetries across the atmosphere. We find that CH4 exhibits strong latitudinal variations linked to deep quench temperatures, while SO2 shows longitudinal asymmetries driven by upper-atmospheric photochemistry and irradiation geometry. In contrast, CO2 remains comparatively insensitive to spatial thermal variations and emerges as a robust tracer of atmospheric metallicity. Synthethic transmission spectra reveal that three-dimensional chemical asymmetries can produce spectral variations comparable to those induced by metallicity itself, demonstrating that limb-averaged interpretations can mask substantial spatial structure in warm giant exoplanet atmospheres.

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Nidhi Bangera, Ludmila Carone, Vikas Soni, Kenneth Goodis Gordon, Luca Fossati, Helena Lecoq-Molinos, Paul B. Rimmer, Peter Woitke, Christiane Helling. 2026-08-12. Chemical Tracers for 3D Atmospheric Asymmetries on WASP-69 b. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11881

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