Related papers: Archean Paleo-climate: The first snowball?
Ice naturally forms in the disordered or ``amorphous'' state when accreted from vapor at temperatures and pressures found in the interstellar medium and in the frigid, low density outer regions of the Sun's protoplanetary disk. It is…
A consistent finding of high obliquity simulations is that they are warmer than their low obliquity counterparts when the climate is cold. Ice-albedo feedback has been suggested as a possible mechanism. In this study, we find that warmer…
We present here formal evidence of a strong linkage between temperature and East Antarctic ice accumulation over the past eight hundred kiloyears, after accounting for thinning. The conclusions are based on statistical analysis of a…
The influence of atmospheric composition on the climates of present-day and early Earth has been studied extensively, but the role of ocean composition has received less attention. We use the ROCKE-3D ocean-atmosphere general circulation…
We have calculated an evolution of protoplanetary disk from an extensive set of initial conditions using a time-dependent model capable of simultaneously keeping track of the global evolution of gas and water-ice. A number of…
Archean atmospheric evolution is the transition from an abiological atmosphere, to an atmosphere for which the composition and therefore climate is highly altered by life. We review the key processes and transitions in this evolution.
In this work we apply a mathematical model of photosynthesis to quantify the potential for photosynthetic life in the very Early Archean oceans. We assume the presence of oceanic blockers of ultraviolet radiation, specifically ferrous ions.…
Leading theories for the presence of plate tectonics on Earth typically appeal to the role of present day conditions in promoting rheological weakening of the lithosphere. However, it is unknown whether the conditions of the early Earth…
A disordered quasi-liquid layer of water is thought to cover the ice surface, but many issues, such as its onset temperature, its thickness, or its actual relation to bulk liquid water have been a matter of unsettled controversy for more…
The nature of the early Martian climate is one of the major unanswered questions of planetary science. Key challenges remain, but a new wave of orbital and in situ observations and improvements in climate modeling have led to significant…
The origin of life on Earth seems to demand a highly reduced early atmosphere, rich in CH4, H2, and NH3, but geological evidence suggests that Earth's mantle has always been relatively oxidized and its emissions dominated by CO2 H2O, and…
In this paper, we present a semiparametric model for describing the effect of temperature on Antarctic ice accumulation on a paleoclimatic time scale. The model is motivated by sharp ups and downs in the rate of ice accumulation apparent…
Rotational dynamics of the Earth, over geological timescales, have profoundly affected local and global climatic evolution, probably contributing to the evolution of life. To better retrieve the Earth's rotational history, and motivated by…
Earth is depleted in volatile elements relative to chondritic meteorites, its possible building blocks. The extent of this depletion increases with decreasing condensation temperature, and is approximated by a cumulative normal…
Although the Earth's orbit is never far from circular, terrestrial planets around other stars might experience substantial changes in eccentricity that could lead to climate changes, including possible "phase transitions" such as the…
We explore the potential multistability of the climate for a planet around the habitable zone. We focus on conditions reminiscent to those of the Earth system, but our investigation aims at presenting a general methodology for dealing with…
Freshwater forcing from a retreating Antarctic Ice Sheet could have a wide range of impacts on future global climate. Here, we report on multi-century (present-2250) climate simulations performed using a fully coupled numerical model…
Understanding how sea ice melts is critical to climate projections. In the Arctic, melt ponds that develop on the surface of sea ice floes during the late spring and summer largely determine their albedo -- a key parameter in climate…
The mean surface temperature on Earth and other planets with atmospheres is determined by the radiative balance between the non-reflected incoming solar radiation and the outgoing long-wave black-body radiation from the atmosphere. The…
Geological evidence suggests liquid water near the Earth's surface as early as 4.4 billion years ago when the faint young Sun only radiated about 70% of its modern power output. At this point, the Earth should have been a global snowball if…