Related papers: The Snowball Stratosphere
Evidence is emerging for physical links among clouds, global temperatures, the global atmospheric electrical circuit and cosmic ray ionisation. The global circuit extends throughout the atmosphere from the planetary surface to the lower…
Simulation results are presented from a new general circulation model (GCM) of Titan, the Titan Atmospheric Model (TAM), which couples the Flexible Modeling System (FMS) spectral dynamical core to a suite of external/sub-grid-scale physics.…
The model accepted is one where during the Archean Eon the Earths climate was clement despite the weaker Sun. The observational evidence that supports this concept is: the emergence of life, the existence of evaporitic sediments and the…
The Great Oxidation Event was a period during which Earth's atmospheric oxygen (O$_2$) concentrations increased from $\sim 10^{-5}$ times its present atmospheric level (PAL) to near modern levels, marking the start of the Proterozoic…
This paper reviews and develops the proposal, widely discussed but not examined in detail, to use stratospheric aerosols to increase the Earth's albedo to Solar radiation in order to control climate change. The potential of this method has…
TRAPPIST-1e is a tidally locked rocky exoplanet orbiting the habitable zone of an M dwarf star. Upcoming observations are expected to reveal new rocky exoplanets and their atmospheres around M dwarf stars. To interpret these future…
Instabilities and turbulence extending to the smallest dynamical scales play important roles in the deposition of energy and momentum by gravity waves throughout the atmosphere. However, these dynamics and their effects have been impossible…
In this study, we compare two analytic energy balance models with explicit dependence on obliquity to study the likelihood of different stable ice configurations. We compare the results of models with different methods of heat transport and…
Climate modeling has shown that tidally influenced terrestrial exoplanets, particularly those orbiting M-dwarfs, have unique atmospheric dynamics and surface conditions that may enhance their likelihood to host viable habitats. However,…
Ground-based observations of the Earthshine, i.e., the light scattered by Earth to the Moon, and then reflected back to Earth, simulate space observations of our planet and represent a powerful benchmark for the studies of Earth-like…
The Global Overturning Circulation (GOC) is a key component of the climate system, transporting heat, carbon, and salt throughout the global ocean. Previous reduced-dimensional models have sought to represent this three-dimensional…
In the outer regions of the habitable zone, the risk of transitioning into a globally frozen "snowball" state poses a threat to the habitability of planets with the capacity to host water-based life. We use a one-dimensional energy balance…
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…
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…
We investigate the effects of varying Saturn's orbit on the atmospheric circulation and surface methane distribution of Titan. Using a new general circulation model of Titan's atmosphere, we simulate its climate under four characteristic…
Nitrogen is a major nutrient for all life on Earth and could plausibly play a similar role in extraterrestrial biospheres. The major reservoir of nitrogen at Earth's surface is atmospheric N2, but recent studies have proposed that the size…
How much of Io's SO$_2$ atmosphere is driven by volcanic outgasing or sublimation of SO$_2$ surface frost is a question with a considerable history. We develop a time dependent surface temperature model including thermal inertia and the…
Surface-bound exospheres facilitate volatile migration across the surfaces of nearly airless bodies. However, such transport requires that the body can both form and retain an exosphere. To form a sublimation exosphere requires the surface…
The history of molecular oxygen (O$_2$) in Earth's atmosphere is still debated; however, geological evidence supports at least two major episodes where O$_2$ increased by an order of magnitude or more: the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) and…
The climates of terrestrial planets with a small amount of water on their surface, called land planets, are significantly different from the climates of planets having a large amount of surface water. Land planets have a higher runaway…