Related papers: Water loss from terrestrial planets with CO2-rich …
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…
The recent detections of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and the promise of characterizing their atmospheres motivates a need to understand how the diversity of possible planetary parameters affects the climate of…
Eccentric planets may spend a significant portion of their orbits at large distances from their host stars, where low temperatures can cause atmospheric CO2 to condense out onto the surface, similar to the polar ice caps on Mars. The…
A planet's surface conditions can significantly impact its climate and habitability. In this study, we use the 3D general circulation model ExoPlaSim to systematically vary dayside land cover on a synchronously rotating, temperate rocky…
The atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are known to have been modified as a consequence of the impact degassing and atmospheric erosion during the late accretion. Despite the commonality of these processes, there are distinct gaps --…
Accurately determining escape rates from a planet's atmosphere is critical for determining its evolution. Escape can be driven by upward thermal conduction of energy deposited well below the exobase, as well as by non-thermal processes…
The chemistry of carbon in aqueous fluids at extreme pressure and temperature conditions is of great importance to Earth's deep carbon cycle, which substantially affects the carbon budget at Earth's surface and global climate change. At…
Most models of volatile delivery to accreting terrestrial planets assume that the carriers for water are similar in water content to the carbonaceous chondrites in our Solar System. Here we suggest that the water content of primitive bodies…
We present an analytic model for the interaction between planetary atmospheres and stellar winds from main sequence M stars, with the purpose of obtaining a quick test-model that estimates the timescale for total atmospheric mass loss due…
The conventional observables to identify a habitable or inhabited environment in exoplanets, such as an ocean glint or abundant atmospheric O$_2$, will be challenging to detect with present or upcoming observatories. Here we suggest a new…
The Habitable Zone (HZ) is defined by the possibility of sustaining liquid water on a planetary surface. In the Solar System, the HZ for a conservative climate model extends approximately between the orbits of Earth and Mars. We elaborate…
When planets receive insolation above a certain critical value called the runaway threshold, liquid surface water vaporizes completely, which forms the inner edge of the habitable zone. Because land planets can emit a large amount of…
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
Free-floating planets (FFPs) can result from dynamical scattering processes happening in the first few million years of a planetary system's life. Several models predict the possibility, for these isolated planetary-mass objects, to retain…
M-stars comprise 80% of main-sequence stars, and so their planetary systems provide the best chance for finding habitable planets, i.e.: those with surface liquid water. We have modelled the broadband albedo or reflectivity of water ice and…
Cycling of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and interior of rocky planets can stabilize global climate and enable planetary surface temperatures above freezing over geologic time. However, variations in global carbon budget and…
Detailed models are compared to recent infrared observations of the nearby extrasolar planet, HD 189733b. It is demonstrated that atmospheric water is present and that the planet's day side has a non-isothermal structure down to gas…
Rocky planet atmospheres form and evolve through interactions between the planet's surface and interior. If a growing rocky planet acquires enough mass prior to the dissipation of the nebular gas disk, it can gravitationally capture a…
In the present chapter we present the results of evolutionary studies of exoplanetary atmospheres. We mostly focus on the sub- to super-Earth domain, although these methods are applicable to all types of exoplanets. We consider both thermal…
One of the unique features associated with the Earth is that the fraction of its surface covered by land is comparable to that spanned by its oceans and other water bodies. Here, we investigate how extraterrestrial biospheres depend on the…