Related papers: Warming the early Earth - CO2 reconsidered
The gas-phase CO abundance (relative to hydrogen) in protoplanetary disks decreases by up to 2 orders of magnitude from its ISM value ${\sim}10^{-4}$, even after accounting for freeze-out and photo-dissociation. Previous studies have shown…
Atmospheric compositions offer valuable clues to planetary formation and evolution. Jupiter has been the most well-studied giant planet in terms of its atmosphere; however, the origin of the Jovian atmospheric composition remains a puzzle…
Planet Earth has evolved from an entirely anoxic planet with possibly a different tectonic regime to the oxygenated world with horizontal plate tectonics that we know today. For most of this time, Earth has been inhabited by a purely…
Carbon dioxide (CO2) increase has been well documented, and global net primary production is of importance to a variety of ecological topics. Since CO2 increases primary production in laboratory experiments, the global effects of increasing…
The chemical makeup of Earth's atmosphere during the Archean (4 Ga-2.5 Ga) and Proterozoic eon (2.5 Ga-0.5 Ga) contrast considerably with the present-day: the Archean was rich in carbon dioxide and methane and the Proterozoic had…
We compute grids of radiative-convective model atmospheres for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune over a range of intrinsic fluxes and surface gravities. The atmosphere grids serve as an upper boundary condition for models of the thermal…
The observed global mean surface temperature increase from 1998 to 2012 was slower than that since 1951. The relative contributions of all relevant factors including climate forcers, however, have not been comprehensively analyzed. Using a…
Ocean planets are volatile rich planets, not present in our Solar System, which are thought to be dominated by deep, global oceans. This results in the formation of high-pressure water ice, separating the planetary crust from the liquid…
Soil has been recognized as an indirect driver of global warming by regulating atmospheric greenhouse gases. However, in view of the higher heat capacity and CO2 concentration in soil than those in atmosphere, the direct contributions of…
Clouds have a strong impact on the climate of planetary atmospheres. The potential scattering greenhouse effect of CO2 ice clouds in the atmospheres of terrestrial extrasolar planets is of particular interest because it might influence the…
The emergence of life on the Earth has required a prior organic chemistry leading to the formation of prebiotic molecules. The origin and the evolution of the organic matter on the early Earth is not yet firmly understood. Several…
Following the mid-Pleistocene transition, the dominant period of glacial cycles changed from 40 ka to ~100 ka. It is broadly accepted that the 40 ka glacial cycles were driven by cyclical changes in obliquity. However, this forcing does not…
Cosmic rays (CR), both solar and Galactic, have an ionising effect on the Earth's atmosphere and are thought to be important for prebiotic molecule production. In particular, the $\rm{H_2}$-dominated atmosphere following an ocean-vaporising…
Massive steam and CO$_2$ atmospheres have been proposed for magma ocean outgassing of Earth and terrestrial planets. Yet formation of such atmospheres depends on volatile exchange with the molten interior, governed by volatile solubilities…
According to the Snowball Earth hypothesis, Earth has experienced periods of low-latitude glaciation in its deep past. Prior studies have used general circulation models (GCMs) to examine the effects such an extreme climate state might have…
A fundamental puzzle of our solar system's formation is understanding why the terrestrial bodies including the planets,comets,and asteroids are depleted in $^{16}$O compared to the Sun. The most favored mechanism,the selective…
A transition to a fully global renewable energy infrastructure is potentially possible in no more than a few decades, even using current wind/solar technologies. We demonstrate that at its completion this transition would terminate…
A solar photospheric "thermal profiling" analysis is presented, exploiting the infrared rovibrational bands of carbon monoxide (CO) as observed with the McMath-Pierce Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) at Kitt Peak, and from above the…
Carbon is an essential element for life on Earth, and the relative abundances of major carbon species (CO2, CO, and CH4) in the atmosphere exert fundamental controls on planetary climate and biogeochemistry. Here, we employed a theoretical…
We present a study of gas-phase H2O and CO2 toward a sample of 14 massive protostars with the Short Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS) on board the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). Modeling of the H2O spectra using a homogeneous model with a…