Related papers: Increased insolation threshold for runaway greenho…
The state of earth's climate is constrained by well-known physical principles such as energy balance and the conservation of energy. Increased greenhouse gas concentrations affect the atmospheric optical depth, and physical consistency…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
Feedbacks that can destabilize the climates of synchronously-rotating rocky planets may arise on planets with strong day-night surface temperature contrasts. Earth-like habitable-zone (HZ) planets maintain stable surface liquid water over…
We discuss how greenhouse gases affect radiation transfer in Earth's atmosphere. We explain how greenhouse gases like water vapor or carbon dioxide, differ from non-greenhouse gases like nitrogen or oxygen. Using simple thermodynamics and…
We use a three-dimensional model to calculate steady-state climates at various intervals in Earth's future, across a parameter space of increasing insolation and decreasing CO$_2$ mixing ratio. Comparison with prior results shows an…
The hydrologic cycle has wide impacts on the ocean salinity and circulation, carbon and nitrogen cycles, and the ecosystem. Under anthropogenic global warming, previous studies showed that the intensification of the hydrologic cycle is a…
We present a large ensemble of simulations of an Earth-like world with increasing insolation and rotation rate. Unlike previous work utilizing idealized aquaplanet configurations we focus our simulations on modern Earth-like topography. The…
The habitable zone is the main tool that mission architectures utilize to select potentially habitable planets for follow up spectroscopic observation. Given its importance, the precise size and location of the habitable zone remains a hot…
Climate transitions on exoplanets offer valuable insights into the atmospheric processes governing planetary habitability. Previous pure-steam atmospheric models show a thermal limit in outgoing long-wave radiation, which has been used to…
There is ongoing interest in the global entropy production rate as a climate diagnostic and predictor, but progress has been limited by ambiguities in its definition; different conceptual boundaries of the climate system give rise to…
Atmospheric ozone plays an important role on the temperature structure of the atmosphere. However, it has not been included in previous studies on the effect of an increasing solar radiation on the Earth's climate. Here we study the climate…
Improving observations of ocean heat content show that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum. The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 \pm 0.15 W/m2…
In this Research Note, I use my single-column climate model to explicitly show that the moist greenhouse surface temperature threshold is sensitive to stratospheric temperature. I argue that this explains most of the discrepancy between 1-D…
Planetary rotation rate is a key parameter in determining atmospheric circulation and hence the spatial pattern of clouds. Since clouds can exert a dominant control on planetary radiation balance, rotation rate could be critical for…
Context: The thermal and chemical structures of the upper atmospheres of planets crucially influence losses to space and must be understood to constrain the effects of losses on atmospheric evolution. Aims: We develop a 1D first-principles…
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…
Young terrestrial planets can capture or outgas hydrogen-rich atmospheres with tens to hundreds of bars of H2, which persist for 100 Myrs or longer. Although the earliest habitable conditions on Earth and terrestrial exoplanets could thus…
The habitable zone (HZ) describes the range of orbital distances around a star where the existence of liquid water on the surface of an Earth-like planet is in principle possible. While 3D climate studies can calculate the water vapor, ice…
An old conceptual physics-based back-of-the-envelope model for greenhouse effect is revisited and validated against state-of-the-art reanalyses. Untraditional diagnostics show a physically consistent picture, for which the state of earth's…
The TRAPPIST-1 system provides an extraordinary opportunity to study multiple terrestrial extrasolar planets and their atmospheres. Here we use the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model version 4 to study the…