CAMEMBERT: A Mini-Neptunes General Circulation Model Intercomparison

With observatories such as JWST, astronomers are now attempting to better understand the previously inscrutable atmospheres of mini-Neptunes, the smaller and often cooler cousins of the better-studied hot Jupiters. General circulation models (GCMs) are an essential part of the toolset used to improve that understanding, from both the perspective of theoretical investigations and in support of observation. It is only recently, however, that the exoplanet community has begun to benchmark and study the behaviour of our GCMs through intercomparisons, a practice that has been going on in the Earth sciences community for decades. With that in mind, we present CAMEMBERT (Comparing Atmospheric Models of Extrasolar Mini-Neptunes Building and Envisioning Retrievals and Transits), a community effort to compare the many of the GCMs used in studies of mini-Neptunes using common parameters and targets in hopes to better understand differences between our models and to better inform the interpretations of our results. This talk will cover the protocol as well as preliminary insights from the project. CAMEMBERT is a part of the CUISINES meta-framework, which also includes the THAI, SAMOSA, CREME, and MOCHA GCM intercomparisons.