Reinterpreting the JWST Observations of 55 Cancri e with a Non-Grey General Circulation Model

Recent observations of 55 Cancri e suggest an atmosphere rich in CO or CO$_2$ (Hu et al. 2024); other observations indicate the planet's eclipse depth is highly variable (e.g. Patel et al. 2024). So far, these observations have only been interpreted using 1D models without self-consistent heat redistribution, as the planet's extreme temperatures make it inaccessible to most 3D models. Here we perform cloud-free GCM simulations of 55 Cancri e using custom correlated-$k$ coefficients developed from the ExoMol database. Our best-fit simulations match the JWST spectra from Hu et al. (2024) well, favoring an atmosphere that is both thick ($\ge$ 10 bar) and CO$_2$-rich ($>1\%$ CO$_2$ volume mixing ratio), while ruling out thin ($<$ 10 bar) and pure-CO/CO$_2$-poor atmosphere, which were previously proposed based on 1D models (Hu et al. 2024; Zilinskas et al. 2025). We also find large-scale atmospheric dynamics, i.e. weather, is insufficient to explain the observed variability. A thick, CO$_2$-rich atmosphere implies that 55 Cancri e likely formed with significantly more volatiles than Earth and Venus. In addition, a thick atmosphere makes it unlikely that the planet's variability is caused by transient outgassing (Heng 2023), favoring other variability mechanisms (e.g. clouds). Our work provides model constraints for upcoming JWST observations of 55 Cancri e, and highlights the importance of interpreting thermal emission observations with self-consistent 3D models.

Source: arXiv:2606.12116v1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12116v1 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.12116v1 Original Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12116v1