The Impact of Cometary “Impacts” on the Chemistry, Climate, and Spectra of Hot Jupiter Atmospheres

Impacts from icy and rocky bodies have helped shape the composition of Solar System objects; for example, the Earth–Moon system, or the recent impact of comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter. It is likely that such impacts also shape the composition of exoplanetary systems. Here, we investigate how cometary impacts might affect the atmospheric composition/chemistry of hot Jupiters, which are prime targets for characterization. We introduce a parameterized cometary impact model that includes thermal ablation and pressure driven breakup, which we couple with the 1D "radiative-convective" atmospheric model ATMO, including disequilibrium chemistry. We use this model to investigate a wide range of impactor masses and compositions, including those based on observations of Solar System comets, and interstellar ices (with JWST). We find that even a small impactor (R = 2.5 km) can lead to significant short-term changes in the atmospheric chemistry, including a factor >10 enhancement in H2O, CO, and CO2 abundances, as well as atmospheric opacity more generally, and the near-complete removal of observable hydrocarbons, such as CH4, from the upper atmosphere. These effects scale with the change in atmospheric C/O ratio and metallicity. Potentially observable changes are possible for a body that has undergone significant/continuous bombardment, such that the global atmospheric chemistry has been impacted. Our works reveals that cometary impacts can significantly alter or pollute the atmospheric composition/chemistry of hot Jupiters. These changes have the potential to mute/break the proposed link between atmospheric C/O ratio and planet formation location relative to key snowlines in the natal protoplanetary disk.