Assigned ID: 1069 ----- Attempting Submission 1 (Sat Feb 25 00:54:48 GMT 2012) ----- HST imaging of the edge-on protoplanetary disk in the HH 30 system has shown that substantial changes to the morphology of the disk occur on time scales much shorter than the local dynamical time. This may be due to time-variable obscuration of starlight by the turbulent inner disk. More recently, mid-infrared variability of protoplanetary disks has been attributed to a similar physical origin. We propose a theoretical investigation that will establish whether the optical and infrared variability is due to turbulent variations in the scale height of dust in the inner disk, and determine what observations of that variability can tell us of the nature of disk turbulence. We will use a new generation of global magnetohydrodynamic simulations to directly model the turbulence in an annulus of the inner disk, extending from the dust destruction radius out to the radius where turbulence is quenched by poor coupling of the gas to magnetic fields. We will use the output of the MHD simulations as input to Monte Carlo radiative transfer calculations of stellar irradiation of the outer disk. We will use these calculations to produce light curves that show how time variable shadowing from the inner disk affects the outer disk observables: scattered light images and the infrared spectral energy distribution. STAR FORMATION 12 Medium false 0.0 0.0 false false true false SUPPORTED