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Planets larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune are some of the mostnumerous in the galaxy, but observational efforts to understand this populationhave proved challenging because optically thick clouds or hazes at highaltitudes obscure molecular features (Kreidberg et al. 2014b). We presentmodels of super Earths that include thick clouds and hazes and predict theirtransmission, thermal emission, and reflected light spectra. Very thick, loftedclouds of salts or sulfides in high metallicity (1000x solar) atmospherescreate featureless transmission spectra in the near-infrared. Photochemicalhazes with a range of particle sizes also create featureless transmissionspectra at lower metallicities. Cloudy thermal emission spectra have mutedfeatures more like blackbodies, and hazy thermal emission spectra have emissionfeatures caused by an inversion layer at altitudes where the haze forms. Closeanalysis of reflected light from warm (~400-800 K) planets can distinguishcloudy spectra, which have moderate albedos (0.05-0.20), from hazy models,which are very dark (0.0-0.03). Reflected light spectra of cold planets (~200K) accessible to a space-based visible light coronagraph will have high albedosand large molecular features that will allow them to be more easilycharacterized than the warmer transiting planets. We suggest a number ofcomplementary observations to characterize this population of planets,including transmission spectra of hot (>1000 K) targets, thermal emissionspectra of warm targets using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), highspectral resolution (R~10^5) observations of cloudy targets, and reflectedlight spectral observations of directly-imaged cold targets. Despite the dearthof features observed in super Earth transmission spectra to date, differentobservations will provide rich diagnostics of their atmospheres.

Thermal Emission and Albedo Spectra of Super Earths with Flat Transmission Spectra