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The usual major carbon/oxygen reservoirs in a hydrogen-rich hot Jupiter are water, carbon monoxide and methane, with their relative importance set by thermochemical equilibrium. This is not a universal ranking for every temperature and composition: nitrogen molecules or carbon dioxide can exceed a strongly depleted member of this trio.

At about one bar, the useful net reaction isThe rightward reaction is exothermic. Cooler gas favors methane and water; warming favors carbon monoxide and suppresses methane. The CO/CH4 crossover is of order $10^3\mathrm{K}$ and shifts with pressure, elemental inventory and metallicity; it is not a universal temperature. Water remains an important oxygen reservoir for oxygen-rich compositions but can dissociate at sufficiently high temperature.

Increasing the atmospheric metallicity of a giant planet raises the available carbon and oxygen. In a dilute, H2-dominated regime, major CO and H2O abundances roughly increase with the enrichment factor, and cool-regime CH4 does likewise. CO2 can rise faster, approximately quadratically in suitable warm regimes. At very high enrichment, the H2 fraction and mean molecular weight also change, invalidating simple linear scalings.

At high temperature and atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio below unity, CO binds much of the carbon, leaving excess oxygen for H2O. As C/O approaches or exceeds one, CO consumes nearly all available oxygen and H2O is strongly depleted; excess carbon enhances CH4, hydrogen cyanide and acetylene. Cooler CH4-dominated chemistry uses less oxygen in CO and can leave more water even at the same elemental ratio. These trends are carbon partition and atmospheric water abundance, and assume equilibrium rather than vertical or horizontal quenching.

These are three distinct ways to maintain disequilibrium chemistry in an exoplanet atmosphere; each compares chemistry with a different transport or irradiation process.

Three solar-system effects illustrate chemical disequilibrium. First, vertical mixing carries carbon monoxide from hot deep regions into cooler observable layers of giant planets, where its local-equilibrium abundance would be small. Second, phosphine survives in the observable atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn because deep supply competes with its destruction, making it a tracer of transport. Third, methane photolysis creates hydrocarbons such as ethane and acetylene, and can help form upper-atmospheric atmospheric hazes in giant planets and Titan.

Three exoplanet effects are complementary. First, carbon monoxide–methane quenching can keep carbon monoxide abundant and methane depleted in cool observable gas, including hot-Neptune/giant atmospheres that would locally favor methane. Second, atmospheric photochemistry dissociates methane/ammonia and produces radicals, hydrogen cyanide, hydrocarbons and possibly atmospheric hazes, changing spectral bands from their equilibrium strengths. Third, horizontal chemical quenching can preserve hot-dayside carbon chemistry on the cooler nightside/terminator and reduce the abundance contrast expected from separate local-equilibrium columns.

Transport, photon-driven reactions and finite chemical adjustment times change the observable composition. The effects are conditional on the species' chemical timescale relative to mixing, advection and irradiation; they do not imply that every molecule is out of equilibrium everywhere.

Four mechanisms that can produce disequilibrium chemistry in an exoplanet atmosphere are:

The exoplanet transport and photochemical examples follow kinetic atmosphere calculations and models including horizontal transport; the condensate example is examined in cold-trap calculations.

Four possible molecular signatures of disequilibrium chemistry in an exoplanet atmosphere, measured through an exoplanet transmission spectrum or exoplanet emission spectrum, are:

The first two signatures can be consequences of the same process and are not independent evidence for two mechanisms. Changes in atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio, atmospheric metallicity of a giant planet, exoplanet cloud coverage, and the atmospheric pressure-temperature profile can mimic abundance changes. A convincing inference compares several molecular bands with a chemically consistent equilibrium model rather than identifying one unusual band alone.

For solar elemental abundances, take a molecular hydrogen- and helium-dominated atmosphere with atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio near $0.55$. The principal oxygen-bearing molecule is generally water; the carbon and nitrogen carriers depend on both temperature and pressure.

At the cool $500\mathrm{K}$ observable upper layers, methane is the expected main carbon reservoir under chemical equilibrium, with abundant water and much less carbon monoxide. At the hotter layers approaching $1400\mathrm{K}$, carbon monoxide becomes the main carbon carrier and water contains much of the oxygen not bound in it. The relevant law of mass action follows fromLower temperature favors the exothermic methane-forming direction, while increasing pressure favors the side with fewer molecules. This explains why the change of dominant carrier cannot be specified by temperature alone.

Nitrogen is distributed between molecular nitrogen and ammonia. Cooling favors ammonia, but low pressure favors molecular nitrogen; it is therefore unsafe to call ammonia dominant throughout the $500\mathrm{K}$ low-pressure region. The exact partition requires the equilibrium constant for ${\mathrm{N}}_2+3{\mathrm{H}}_2\rightleftharpoons 2{\mathrm{NH}}_3$.

Carbon dioxide is usually a minor constituent at solar composition; hydrogen cyanide and acetylene are much less abundant than the principal carbon carriers in this oxygen-rich equilibrium case. Condensation can remove refractory species where a condensation curve is crossed. The robust cool-atmosphere expectation is a molecular hydrogen–helium background with methane and water, changing toward carbon monoxide in hotter layers. Precise mixing ratios require thermodynamic data and an explicitly specified elemental inventory after rainout.

At fixed temperature and pressure, the atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio controls the division of the elemental inventory among carbon monoxide, methane, water and other molecules. For an oxygen-rich mixture, water can remain after carbon monoxide consumes its share of oxygen. Increasing the atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio reduces the oxygen available for water, particularly in the hotter layers where carbon monoxide is stable. Near or above unity there, water can become strongly depleted while excess carbon feeds methane, hydrogen cyanide and acetylene. This familiar hot carbon-rich behavior should not be applied unchanged to every cool layer: at $500\mathrm{K}$, methane formation can leave substantial water even at high atmospheric carbon-to-oxygen ratio.

Increasing the atmospheric metallicity of a giant planet at fixed elemental ratios increases the heavy-element inventory relative to molecular hydrogen and helium. Abundances of water and the major carbon-bearing molecules generally rise while molecular hydrogen remains dominant. In that regime, the law of mass action for $\mathrm{CO}+{\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}\rightleftharpoons {\mathrm{CO}}_2+{\mathrm{H}}_2$ givesWhere carbon monoxide and water each scale roughly linearly with enrichment $Z$, carbon dioxide consequently scales approximately as $Z^2$. This scaling changes when molecular hydrogen ceases to dominate or chemical partitioning changes. Higher enrichment can also favor carbon monoxide over methane at fixed conditions, increase mean molecular weight, and reduce the atmospheric scale height and transmission-feature amplitudes. Cloud formation and atmospheric condensate rainout alter the observable elemental ratios relative to the bulk ones.