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The climate of Mars likely evolved from a warmer, wetter early state to the cold, arid current state. However, no solutions for this evolution have previously been found to satisfy the observed geological features and isotopic measurements…
Atmospheric refraction affects to various degrees exoplanet transit, lunar eclipse, as well as stellar occultation observations. Exoplanet retrieval algorithms often use analytical expressions for the column abundance along a ray traversing…
Liquid water is one of the most important materials affecting the climate and habitability of a terrestrial planet. Liquid water vaporizes entirely when planets receive insolation above a certain value, which is called the runaway…
Rocky planets are common around other stars, but their atmospheric properties remain largely unconstrained. Thanks to a wealth of recent planet discoveries and upcoming advances in observing capability, we are poised to characterize the…
Near-term studies of Venus-like atmospheres with JWST promise to advance our knowledge of terrestrial planet evolution. However, the remote study of Venus in the Solar System and the ongoing efforts to characterize gaseous exoplanets both…
Earth possesses a persistent, internally-generated magnetic field, whereas no trace of a dynamo has been detected on Venus, at present or in the past, although a high surface temperature and recent resurfacing events may have removed…
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,…
Based on detailed 2D and 3D numerical radiation-hydrodynamics (RHD) simulations of time-dependent compressible convection, we have studied the dynamics and thermal structure of the convective surface layers of a prototypical late-type…
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…
MESSENGER observations suggest a magma ocean formed on proto-Mercury, during which evaporation of metals and outgassing of C- and H-bearing volatiles produced an early atmosphere. Atmospheric escape subsequently occurred by plasma heating,…
Terrestrial-type exoplanets orbiting nearby red dwarf stars (M-dwarfs) are among the best targets for atmospheric characterization and biosignature searches in the near future. Recent evolutionary studies have suggested that terrestrial…
Venus and Earth are similar in bulk properties yet followed dramatically different climatic trajectories. Reconstructing Venus's climate evolution requires understanding how rotation, obliquity, eccentricity, and solar luminosity shaped…
Water photolysis and hydrogen loss from the upper atmospheres of terrestrial planets is of fundamental importance to climate evolution but remains poorly understood in general. Here we present a range of calculations we performed to study…
Planets that form early enough to be embedded in the circumstellar gas disk accumulate thick atmospheres of nebular gas. Models of these atmospheres need to specify the surface luminosity (i.e. energy loss rate) of the planet. This…
We consider super-Earth sized planets which have a water mass fraction that is large enough to form an external mantle composed of high pressure water ice polymorphs and that lack a substantial H/He atmosphere. We consider such planets in…
The signatures of planets hosted by M dwarfs are more readily detected with transit photometry and radial velocity methods than those of planets around larger stars. Recently, transit photometry was used to discover seven planets orbiting…
Most exoplanets with a few Earth radii are more inflated than bare-rock planets with the same mass, indicating a substantial volatile amount. Neither the origin of the volatiles nor the planet's bulk composition can be constrained from the…
The presence of an atmosphere over sufficiently long timescales is widely perceived as one of the most prominent criteria associated with planetary surface habitability. We address the crucial question as to whether the seven Earth-sized…
Even if their detection is for now challenging, observation of small terrestrial planets will be easier in a near future thanks to continuous improvements of detection and characterisation instruments. In this quest, climate modeling is a…
Conventional definitions of habitability require abundant liquid surface water to exist continuously over geologic timescales. Water in each of its thermodynamic phases interacts with solar and thermal radiation and is the cause for strong…