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In the last few years astronomical surveys have expanded the reach of planetary science into the realm of small and dense extrasolar worlds. These share a number of characteristics with the terrestrial and icy planetary objects of the Solar…
We model the evolution of the snow line in a protoplanetary disc. If the magneto-rotational instability (MRI) drives turbulence throughout the disc, there is a unique snow line outside of which the disc is icy. The snow line moves closer to…
Understanding the interactions between ice sheets and global climate forcings over geological timescales is essential for projecting their future. Previous studies have highlighted the role of ice dynamics and climate interactions in…
Variations in the reflective properties of the bulk material that comprises the surface of land-dominated planets will affect the planetary energy balance by interacting differently with incident radiation from the host star. Furthermore,…
According to the standard liquid-water definition, the Earth is only partially habitable. We reconsider planetary habitability in the framework of energy-balance models, the simplest seasonal models in physical climatology, to assess the…
The climate on early Mars is one of the major unsolved problems. It is unclear whether early Mars was warm and wet or cold and icy. Morphological features on Mars such as sinuous ridges could provide critical constraints to address this…
The first step in exploring the properties of dynamical systems like the Earth climate is to identify the different phase space regions where the trajectories asymptotically evolve, called `attractors'. In a given system, multiple…
"With five parameters one can fit an elephant". This provocative statement expresses the fact that when a theory has several adjustable parameters, an agreement with empirical data can be of modest value. What about a theory which contains…
Beneath the icy shell encasing Enceladus, a small icy moon of Saturn, a global ocean of liquid water ejects geyser-like plumes into space through fissures in the ice, making it an attractive place to investigate habitability and to search…
This paper discusses a recently proposed scenario of a climate-induced Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 11th century AD. It demonstrates that such a scenario cannot be maintained when confronted with proxy data from various…
We use the hyper-netted chain approximation of liquid state theory to analyze the evolution with density of the pair correlation function in a model of soft spheres with harmonic repulsion. As observed in recent experiments on jammed soft…
Pebbles of millimeter sizes are abundant in protoplanetary discs around young stars. Chondrules inside primitive meteorites - formed by melting of dust aggregate pebbles or in impacts between planetesimals - have similar sizes. The role of…
Identifying liquid water on the surface of planets is a high priority, as this traditionally defines habitability. One proposed signature of oceans is specular reflection ("glint"), which increases the apparent albedo of a planet at…
The aim of this study is to analyze the Earth habitability with respect to the direct exposition of the Earth atmosphere to the solar wind along the Suns evolution on the main sequence including the realistic evolution of the space weather…
Recent detections of carbon-bearing molecules in the atmosphere of a candidate Hycean world, K2-18 b, with JWST are opening the prospects for characterising potential biospheres on temperate exoplanets. Hycean worlds are a recently…
Conventional definitions of habitability require abundant liquid surface water to exist continuously over geologic timescales. Water in each of its thermodynamic phases interacts with solar and thermal radiation and is the cause for strong…
Planetary climate can be affected by the interaction of the host star spectral energy distribution with the wavelength-dependent reflectivity of ice and snow. Here we explore this effect using a one dimensional (1-D), line-by-line,…
The discovery of thousands of highly irradiated, low-mass, exoplanets has led to the idea that atmospheric escape is an important process that can drive their evolution. Of particular interest is the inference from recent exoplanet…
The role of water ice in the solar system is reviewed from a fluid-dynamical point of view. On Earth and Mars, water ice forms ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers at the surface, which show glacial flow under their own weight. By contrast,…
Liquid water is a critical component of habitability. However, the production and stability of surficial liquid water can be challenging on planets outside the Habitable Zone and devoid of adequate greenhouse warming. On such cold, icy…