Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Atmospheres

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope and other upcoming missions, we are capturing high-quality data from distant worlds at an unprecedented rate. Our ability to interpret those data reliably is lagging, however. Many atmospheric “retrieval” and climate/chemistry models rest on incomplete laboratory measurements, simplified physics/chemistry, and coarse-grained assumptions – different models can reach conflicting conclusions from the same set of observations. This initiative aims to close the ground truth gap by building a cross-disciplinary community linking observations, laboratory experiments, and theory to create more realistic, process-based atmospheric models for both Earth and other worlds. It will bring together astrophysicists and exoplanet observers, planetary scientists, terrestrial atmospheric observers and modelers, astro-statisticians, and physical/analytical chemists and experimentalists to create an integrated community to advance characterization and modeling of terrestrial and extraterrestrial atmospheres and build validated, cross-checked tools to expand what atmospheres can teach us about planetary evolution and deepen insight into our own planet.