Related papers: Planetary climate under extremely high vertical di…
The majority of potentially habitable exoplanets detected orbit stars cooler than the Sun, and therefore are irradiated by a stellar spectrum peaking at longer wavelengths than that incident on Earth. Here, we present results from a set of…
The competition between the torques induced by solid and thermal tides drives the rotational dynamics of Venus-like planets and super-Earths orbiting in the habitable zone of low-mass stars. The tidal responses of the atmosphere and…
Eccentricity is an important orbital parameter. Understanding its effect on planetary climate and habitability is critical for us to search for a habitable world beyond our solar system. The orbital configurations of M-dwarf planets are…
The tidal heating of hypothetical rocky (or terrestrial) extra-solar planets spans a wide range of values depending on stellar masses and initial orbits. Tidal heating may be sufficiently large (in many cases, in excess of radiogenic…
Atmospheric heat redistribution shapes the remote appearance of rocky exoplanets but there is currently no easy way to predict a planet's heat redistribution from its physical properties. This paper proposes an analytical scaling theory for…
Rocky planets hosted by close-in extrasolar systems are likely to be tidally locked in 1:1 spin-orbit resonance, a configuration where they exhibit permanent dayside and nightside. Because of the resulting day-night temperature gradient,…
Motivated by the important role of the ocean in the Earth climate system, here we investigate possible scenarios of ocean circulations on exoplanets using a one-layer shallow water ocean model. Specifically, we investigate how planetary…
The equilibrium rotation rate of a planet is determined by the sum of torques acting on its solid body. For planets with atmospheres, the dominant torques are usually the gravitational tide, which acts to slow the planet's rotation rate,…
It is now understood that the accretion of terrestrial planets naturally involves giant collisions, the moon-forming impact being a well known example. In the aftermath of such collisions the surface of the surviving planet is very hot and…
Conventionally, a habitable planet is one that can support liquid water on its surface. Habitability depends on temperature, which is set by insolation and the greenhouse effect, due mainly to CO2 and water vapor. The CO2 level is increased…
A terrestrial planet is molten during formation and may remain so if subject to intense insolation or tidal forces. Observations continue to favour the detection and characterisation of hot planets, potentially with large outgassed…
The circulation in Europa's ocean determines the degree of thermal, mechanical and chemical coupling between the ice shell and the silicate mantle. Using global direct numerical simulations, we investigate the effect of heterogeneous tidal…
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,…
Earth likely acquired much of its inventory of volatile elements during the main stage of its formation. Some of Earth's proto-atmosphere must therefore have survived the giant impacts, collisions between planet-sized bodies, that dominate…
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…
Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of low-mass stars undergo strong tidal effects that modify their spin states. These planets are expected to host dense atmospheres that can also play an important role in the spin evolution. On one…
Oceanic tides are a major source of tidal dissipation. They drive the evolution of planetary systems and the rotational dynamics of planets. However, 2D models commonly used for the Earth cannot be applied to extrasolar telluric planets…
Lava planets have non-global, condensible atmospheres similar to icy bodies within the solar system. Because they depend on interior dynamics, studying the atmospheres of lava planets can lead to understanding unique geological processes…
Using an idealised general circulation model, we investigate the atmospheric circulation of Earth-like terrestrial planets in a variety of orbital configurations. We relax the common assumption of the planet being tidally-locked, and look…
The upper atmospheres of Mars and Titan, as well as those on many other planetary bodies, exhibit significant density variations vs. altitude that are interpreted as gravity waves. Such data is then used to extract vertical temperature…