The Polar Vortex Hypothesis: Evolving, Spectrally Distinct Polar Regions Explain Short- and Long-term Light-curve Evolution and Color–Inclination Trends in Brown Dwarfs and Giant Exoplanets

Abstract

Recent studies revealed viewing-angle-dependent color and spectral trends in brown dwarfs, as well as long-term photometric variability (∼100 hr). The origins of these trends are yet unexplained. Here, we propose that these seemingly unrelated sets of observations stem from the same phenomenon: the polar regions of brown dwarfs and directly imaged exoplanets are spectrally different from lower-latitude regions, and they evolve over longer timescales, possibly driven by polar vortices. We explore this hypothesis via a spatiotemporal atmosphere model capable of simulating time series and disk-integrated spectra of ultracool atmospheres. We study three scenarios with different spectral and temporal components: a null hypothesis without polar vortex, and two scenarios with polar vortices. We find that the scenarios with polar vortex can explain the observed infrared color–inclination trend and the variability amplitude–inclination trend. The presence of spectrally distinct, time-evolving polar regions in brown dwarfs and giant exoplanet atmospheres raises the possibility that one-dimensional static atmospheric models may be insufficient for reproducing ultracool atmospheres in detail.