Related papers: Archean Paleo-climate: The first snowball?
The Earth, like other planets with a relatively thick atmosphere, is not locally in radiative equilibrium and the transport of energy by the geophysical fluids (atmosphere and ocean) plays a fundamental role in determining its climate.…
Flyby images of (486958) Arrokoth (Ultima Thule, 2014 MU$_{69}$) show a comparatively bright "necklace" in the neck, or cleft between its two lobes, in contrast to its generally low albedo. We suggest that the necklace may be the result of…
The principles of Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics are disclosed leading to a new way to interpret whole-Earth dynamics. Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics incorporates elements of and unifies the two seemingly divergent dominant theories…
Several environmental tipping points and self-reinforcing feedback loops are still disregarded within the frequently used climate models. Thus, existing climate models are not very representative for providing projections of the conditions…
Hot super Earths are exoplanets with short orbital periods ($<$ 10 days), heated by their host stars to temperatures high enough for their rocky surfaces to become molten. A few hot super Earths exhibit high geometric albedos ($>$ 0.4) in…
If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and…
Essential insights on the characterization and quality of a detectable biosphere are gained by analyzing the effects of its environmental parameters. We compiled environmental and biological properties of the Phanerozoic Eon from various…
Modelling of Extreme Scattering Events suggests that the Galaxy's dark matter is an undetected population of cold, AU-sized, planetary-mass gas clouds. None of the direct observational constraints on this picture -- thermal/non-thermal…
Trapped beneath the Antarctic ice sheet lie over 400 subglacial lakes, which are considered to be extreme, isolated, yet viable habitats for microbial life. The physical conditions within subglacial lakes are critical to evaluating how and…
There is widespread agreement that ice sheets flowed into the ocean in tropical latitudes at sea level during the Earth's past. Whether these extreme ice ages were snowball Earth events, with the entire surface covered in ice, or whether…
We analyze the stability of a low-order coupled sea ice and climate model and extract the essential physics governing the time scales of response as a function of greenhouse gas forcing. Under present climate conditions the stability is…
The Earth's albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar…
We explore the atmospheric and surface history of a hypothetical paleo-Venus climate using a 3-D General Circulation Model. We constrain our model with the in-situ and remote sensing Venus data available today. Given that Venus and Earth…
In this paper, we propose to predict analytically the temperature of an evaporating spherical droplet. To do so, we first review, from data in the literature, the effect of temperature on the physical parameters involved in cooling-induced…
Water condensed as ice beyond the water snowline, the location in the Sun's natal gaseous disk where temperatures were below 170 K. As the disk evolved and cooled, the snowline moved inwards. A low temperature in the terrestrial…
The dynamics of many of Antarctica's glaciers are modulated by a hydrological system at the base of the ice. Sedimentary basins beneath the ice bed contribute to the water budget in this hydrological system by discharging or taking up…
The early start to life naively suggests that abiogenesis is a rapid process on Earth-like planets. However, if evolution typically takes ~4Gyr to produce intelligent life-forms like us, then the limited lifespan of Earth's biosphere…
It has been proposed that galactic cosmic rays may influence the Earth's climate by affecting cloud formation. If changes in cloudiness play a part in climate change, their effect changes sign in Antarctica. Satellite data from the Earth…
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…
The interest in the structure of ice-rich planetary bodies, in particular the differentiation between ice and rock, has grown due to the discovery of Kuiper belt objects and exoplanets. We thus carry out a parameter study for a range of…