Related papers: Is the faint young Sun problem for Earth solved?
The Sun's outer atmosphere is heated to temperatures of millions of degrees, and solar plasma flows out into interplanetary space at supersonic speeds. This paper reviews our current understanding of these interrelated problems: coronal…
Several clues indicate that Titan's atmosphere has been depleted in methane during some period of its history, possibly as recently as 0.5-1 billion years ago. It could also happen in the future. Under these conditions, the atmosphere…
Many habitable zone exoplanets are expected to form with water mass fractions higher than that of the Earth. For rocky exoplanets with 10-1000x Earth's H2O but without H2, we model the multi-Gyr evolution of ocean temperature and chemistry,…
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…
Terrestrial planets in the Habitable Zone of Sun-like stars are priority targets for detection and observation by the next generation of space telescopes. Earth's long-term habitability may have been tied to the geological carbon cycle, a…
Inferring the climate and surface conditions of terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone is a major goal for the field of exoplanet science. This pursuit will require both statistical analyses of the population of habitable planets as…
Current understanding suggests that as the Sun brightens in the far future, Earth's carbonate-silicate cycle will offset increasing temperatures by drawing CO$_2$ out of the atmosphere, ultimately leading to the extinction of all…
The discovery of thousands of highly irradiated, low-mass, exoplanets has led to the idea that atmospheric escape is an important process that can drive their evolution. Of particular interest is the inference from recent exoplanet…
The recently discovered exoplanet Gl581d is extremely close to the outer edge of its system's habitable zone, which has led to much speculation on its possible climate. We have performed a range of simulations to assess whether, given…
A theory is described based on resonant thermal diffusion waves in the sun that appears to explain many details of the paleotemperature record for the last 5.3 million years. These include the observed periodicities, the relative strengths…
Water vapour atmospheres with content equivalent to the Earth's oceans, resulting from impacts or a high insolation, were found to yield a surface magma ocean. This was, however, a consequence of assuming a fully convective structure. Here…
As the 21st century progresses, photovoltaic technology is becoming a major provider of the worlds electricity, while effects of global climate change unfold. This development begs the question: is climate change affecting the energy…
Context. The Sun acts as a cornerstone of stellar physics. Thanks to spectroscopic, helioseismic and neutrino flux observations, we can use the Sun as a laboratory of fundamental physics in extreme conditions. The conclusions we draw are…
The long-term temperature response to a given change in CO2 forcing, or Earth-system sensitivity (ESS), is a key parameter quantifying our understanding about the relationship between changes in Earth's radiative forcing and the resulting…
The recent downward revision of the solar photospheric abundances now leads to severe inconsistencies between the theoretical predictions for the internal structure of the Sun and the results of helioseismology. There have been claims that…
The solar surface and atmosphere are highly dynamic plasma environments, which evolve over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Large-scale eruptions, such as coronal mass ejections, can be accelerated to millions of kilometres per…
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…
Most observations of polluted white dwarf atmospheres are consistent with accretion of water depleted planetary material. Among tens of known cases, merely two cases involve accretion of objects that contain a considerable mass fraction of…
The Earth's albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar…
This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy - the discovery some fifteen years ago of the first planets around other stars (exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own…