Related papers: The Study of Climate on Alien Worlds
This whitepaper discusses the diversity of exoplanets that could be detected by future observations, so that comparative exoplanetology can be performed in the upcoming era of large space-based flagship missions. The primary focus will be…
This invited review for young researchers presents key ideas on cloud formation as key part for virtual laboratories for exoplanet atmospheres. The basic concepts are presented, followed by utilising a time-scale analysis to disentangle…
The study of planets beyond the solar system and the search for other habitable planets and life is just beginning. Ground-based (radial velocity and transits) and space-based surveys (transits and astrometry) will identify planets spanning…
Over 300 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been detected orbiting nearby stars. We now hope to conduct a census of all planets around nearby stars and to characterize their atmospheres and surfaces with spectroscopy. Rocky planets within…
I present a review of observational efforts to study known extrasolar planets by methods that are complementary to the radial velocity technique. I describe the current state of attempts to detect and characterize such planets by…
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered to date, dozens of which are rocky in composition and are orbiting within the circumstellar habitable zone of their host star. The next frontier in life detection beyond our…
We study the impact of multi-layered clouds (low-level water and high-level ice clouds) on the thermal emission spectra of Earth-like planets orbiting different types of stars. Clouds have an important influence on such planetary emission…
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…
Within the next few years, several instruments aiming at imaging extrasolar planets will see first light. In parallel, low mass planets are being searched around red dwarfs which offer more favorable conditions, both for radial velocity…
The last few years has seen a dramatic increase in the number of exoplanets known and in the range of methods for characterising their atmospheric properties. At the same time, new discoveries of increasingly cooler brown dwarfs have pushed…
Clouds and hazes are commonplace in the atmospheres of solar system planets and are likely ubiquitous in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets as well. Clouds affect every aspect of a planetary atmosphere, from the transport of radiation,…
Theoretical arguments and observations suggest that the atmospheres of Brown Dwarfs and planets are very dynamic on chemical and on physical time scales. The modelling of such substellar atmospheres has, hence, been much more demanding than…
Imagining what life on other planets, and intelligent life in particular, may be like is a long-running theme in human culture. It is a manifestation of the innate human curiosity about the Cosmos, and it has inspired numerous works of art…
The phase or orbital light curves of extrasolar terrestrial planets in reflected or emitted light will contain information about their atmospheres and surfaces complementary to data obtained by other techniques such as spectrosopy. We show…
From life on other planets to virtual classrooms this thesis spans a wide array of research topics all based on how we see other worlds. Our understanding of everything from moon phases, the planets in our Solar System, and exoplanet…
Hot Jupiters are new laboratories for the physics of giant planet atmospheres. Subject to unusual forcing conditions, the circulation regime on these planets may be unlike anything known in the Solar System. Characterizing the atmospheric…
The habitability of the surface of any planet is determined by a complex evolution of its interior, surface, and atmosphere. The electromagnetic and particle radiation of stars drive thermal, chemical and physical alteration of planetary…
Cloud computing offers an opportunity to run compute-resource intensive climate models at scale by parallelising model runs such that datasets useful to the exoplanet community can be produced efficiently. To better understand the…
As of 2025, over 6000 planets are known to orbit stars other than our Sun. We can measure their sizes and orbital periods, infer their masses and temperatures, and constrain their compositions. Based on these data, about 1% of extrasolar…
Understanding the climates of terrestrial exoplanets and the detectability of biosignatures is an inherently interdisciplinary challenge, requiring the integration of insights from Solar System exploration, exoplanet observations and…