Related papers: The unstable CO2 feedback cycle on ocean planets
Extrasolar terrestrial planets with the potential to host life might have large obliquities or be subject to strong obliquity variations. We revisit the habitability of oblique planets with an energy balance climate model (EBM) allowing for…
A balanced ratio of ocean to land is believed to be essential for an Earth-like biosphere and one may conjecture that plate-tectonics planets should be similar in geological properties. After all, the volume of continental crust evolves…
Chemical disequilibrium in exoplanetary atmospheres (detectable with remote spectroscopy) can indicate life. The modern Earth's atmosphere-ocean system has a much larger chemical disequilibrium than other solar system planets with…
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…
The habitable zone is defined as the orbital region around a star where planetary feedback cycles buffer atmospheric greenhouse gases that, in combination with solar luminosity, maintain surface temperatures suitable for liquid water.…
The dominant paradigm in assigning "habitability"' to terrestrial planets is to define a circumstellar habitable zone: the locus of orbital radii in which the planet is neither too hot nor too cold for life as we know it. One dimensional…
Understanding when global glaciations occur on Earth-like planets is a major challenge in climate evolution research. Most models of how greenhouse gases like CO2 evolve with time on terrestrial planets are deterministic, but the complex,…
Impacts by rocky and icy bodies are thought to have played a key role in shaping the composition of solar system objects, including the Earth's habitability. Hence, it is likely that they play a similar role in exoplanetary systems. We…
Water and land surfaces on a planet interact with gases in the atmosphere and with radiation from the star. These interactions define the environments that prevail on the planet, some of which may be more amenable to prebiotic chemistry,…
The nearly logarithmic radiative impact of CO$_2$ means that planets near the outer edge of the liquid water habitable zone (HZ) require $\sim$10$^6$x more CO$_2$ to maintain temperatures conducive to standing liquid water on the planetary…
Understanding the possible climatic conditions on rocky extrasolar planets, and thereby their potential habitability, is one of the major subjects of exoplanet research. Determining how the climate, as well as potential atmospheric…
High obliquity planets represent potentially extreme limits of terrestrial climate, as they exhibit large seasonality, a reversed annual-mean pole-to-equator gradient of stellar heating, and novel cryospheres. A suite of 3-D global climate…
The habitability of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs is a key topic in the search for extraterrestrial life. The climates of these planets differ significantly from the Earth's due to their likely tidal locking, resulting in 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…
Earth's climate is influenced by over a dozen feedbacks, but only three dominate its long-term climate behavior. Models of the exoplanet habitable zone (HZ) assume that this is similar for other Earth-like planets. We used dynamical…
The insolation a planet receives from its parent star is the main driver of the climate and depends on the planet's orbital configuration. Planets with non-zero obliquity and eccentricity experience seasonal insolation variations. As a…
Models of thermal evolution, crustal production, and CO$_2$ cycling are used to constrain the prospects for habitability of rocky planets, with Earth-like size and composition, in the stagnant lid regime. Specifically, we determine the…
Planetary obliquity is a first order control on planetary climate and seasonal contrast, which has a number of cascading consequences for life. How moderately high obliquity (obliquities greater than Earth's current obliquity up to…
Although non-greenhouse gases can vary substantially in abundance in Earth-like atmospheres, their climatic influences remain insufficiently understood. To investigate how such gases regulate climate, we vary the abundance of N$_2$ as a…
We use a one-dimensional line-by-line radiative-convective model to simulate hot, dense terrestrial-planet atmospheres. We find that strong shortwave absorption by H2O and CO2 inhibits near-surface convection, reducing surface temperatures…