Climate modellers are building a planet simulator from scratch, using only the universal laws of physics rather than Earth-specific shortcuts. Current climate models struggle to simulate planets that differ significantly from Earth, because they rely on formulas tuned to our own world. This limits their accuracy for predicting Earth’s own climate change and extreme weather. The project, called Foundation, will construct a 3D atmospheric model based on fundamental physical processes—fluid flow, moisture physics, cloud formation—that apply on any planet. The team will test it on Solar System worlds with notoriously difficult atmospheres: Jupiter’s chaotic storms, Venus’s deep circulation, and Titan’s methane cycle. If successful, Foundation could dramatically improve the reliability of Earth climate projections and extreme-weather forecasts, which increasingly affect infrastructure, agriculture, and disaster planning. It would also allow scientists to characterise exoplanet atmospheres more accurately and develop a general theory of climate stability for rocky planets. This is fundamental science with no immediate commercial application, but past work on planetary atmospheres has underpinned everything from weather satellites to aviation safety. A universal climate model could similarly reshape how we understand and predict the behaviour of atmospheres anywhere in the Universe.
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Planetary climate models are essential to understanding the climate on Earth while also being windows into the many climates that may exist throughout the Universe. However, current models often fail to simulate planets that diverged from Earth-like conditions as they rely on Earth-centric formulations and suffer a shortage of first principle representations. This severely impacts our ability to understand and predict climate change and evolution, as the physical accuracy of the simulations is compromised. To solve this current gap in our knowledge, I will lead the development of the first planet climate simulator, Foundation. My central role in developing unprecedented 3D planetary atmospheric models from scratch sets me in an advantageous position to successfully lead this ambitious project. Our goal is to use the building blocks of physical processes we know occur in atmospheres, such as fluid flow equations, moist physics and cloud formation, and build up climate physics in a 3D model that achieves accurate simulations. Our novel model will address climate phenomena that remain unsolved in the Solar System due to current model limitations, namely the nature of Jupiter's chaotic atmosphere, Venus's deep atmospheric circulation and Titan's methane cycle. These are major gaps in our knowledge, even with more than 50 years of spacecraft data. A model based on Universal physics that can reproduce the most challenging climates of the Solar System is extremely valuable to evaluate Earth's climate model predictions. Our approach can strongly impact the robustness of Earth's changing climate simulations and the prediction of extreme weather events, which are becoming increasingly more critical to our living environment. Foundation's greater climate prediction capabilities will also revolutionise exoplanet atmospheric characterisation and provide a thorough theory on the climate stability of terrestrial planets, essential to our understanding of climate diversity.
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