Related papers: The Snowball Stratosphere
Terrestrial planets orbiting within the habitable zones of M-stars are likely to become tidally locked in a 1:1 spin:orbit configuration and are prime targets for future characterization efforts. An issue of importance for the potential…
During the solar journey through galactic space, variations in the physical properties of the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM) modify the heliosphere and modulate the flux of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) at the surface of the Earth, with…
Our recent work shows how M-Earth climates and transmission spectra depend on the amount of ice-free ocean on the planet's dayside and the mass of N2 in its atmosphere. M-Earths with more ice-free ocean and thicker atmospheres are hotter…
Determining the habitability and interpreting future atmospheric observations of exoplanets requires understanding the atmospheric dynamics and chemistry from a 3-D perspective. Previous studies have shown significant spatial variability in…
We investigate how obliquity affects stratospheric humidity using a 3D general circulation model and find the stratosphere under high obliquity could be over 3 orders of magnitude moister than under the low obliquity equivalent, even with…
Context. The study of the snow line is an important topic in several domains of astrophysics, and particularly for the evolution of proto-stellar environments and the formation of planets. Aims. The formation of the first layer of ice on…
Atmospheric circulation patterns derived from multi-spectral remote sensing can serve as a guide for choosing a suitable entry site for a future in situ probe mission. Since the Voyager-2 flybys in the 1980s, three decades of observations…
The habitable zone concept is important because it focuses the scientific search for extraterrestrial life and aids the planning of future telescopes. Recent work has shown that planets near the outer edge of the habitable zone might not…
Space weather in exoplanetary systems, driven by transient stellar emissions such as flares, coronal mass ejections, and stellar proton events, can significantly influence planetary habitability and the long-term evolution of atmospheres.…
We are investigating the possible origin of small-scale anomalies, like the annual stratospheric temperature anomalies. Unexpectedly within known physics, their observed planetary "dependency", does not match concurrent solar activity,…
A concern for stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is that stratospheric aerosols could inadvertently alter rain and winds through mechanisms independent of the intended surface cooling. We here use a multi-model framework to investigate…
What was the nature of the Late Hesperian climate? Warm and wet or cold and dry? Formulated this way the question leads to an apparent paradox since both options seem implausible. A warm and wet climate would have produced extensive fluvial…
Sublimation of drifting snow, which is significant for the balances of mass and energy of the polar ice sheet, is a complex physical process with intercoupling between ice crystals, wind field, temperature, and moisture. Here 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 steady response of the stratosphere to a sea surface temperature (SST) forcing is considered in two separate theoretical models. It is first shown that anomalies in SST impose a geopotential anomaly at the tropopause. Solutions to the…
Owing to their wavelengths dependent absorption and scattering properties, clouds have a strong impact on the climate of planetary atmospheres. Especially, the potential greenhouse effect of CO2 ice clouds in the atmospheres of terrestrial…
Uranus provides a unique laboratory to test our understanding of planetary atmospheres under extreme conditions. Multi-spectral observations from Voyager, ground-based observatories, and space telescopes have revealed a delicately banded…
Carbon dioxide ice clouds are thought to play an important role for cold terrestrial planets with thick CO2 dominated atmospheres. Various previous studies showed that a scattering greenhouse effect by carbon dioxide ice clouds could result…
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…
The glaciological record of atmospheric composition suggests O2 has declined over the last 800000 years at an average rate of 0.3 x 1012 mol (Tmol) O2 yr-1. Because the geological carbon cycle regulates long term atmospheric oxygen…