Related papers: Waste Heat and Habitability: Constraints from Tech…
The ability of a planet to maintain surface water, key to life as we know it, depends on solar and planetary energy. As a star ages, it delivers more energy to a planet. As a planet ages it produces less internal heat, which leads to…
Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are evaluated. Temperature,…
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…
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…
Abstract: The rising global temperatures caused by climate change significantly impact energy consumption and electricity generation. Fluctuating temperatures and frequent extreme weather events disrupt energy production and consumption…
Habitability is a measure of an environment's potential to support life, and a habitable exoplanet supports liquid water on its surface. However, a planet's success in maintaining liquid water on its surface is the end result of a complex…
Habitability is usually defined as the requirement for a terrestrial planet's atmosphere to sustain liquid water. This definition can be complemented by the dynamical requirement that other planets in the system do not gravitationally…
Earth will become uninhabitable within 2-3 Gyr as a result of the moving boundaries of the habitable zone caused by the increasing luminosity of the Sun. Predictions about the future of habitable conditions on Earth include a decline in…
The habitable fraction of a planet's surface is important for the detectability of surface biosignatures. The extent and distribution of habitable areas is influenced by external parameters that control the planet's climate, atmospheric…
Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…
Mounting evidence indicates that our planet might experience runaway effects associated to rising temperatures and ecosystem overexploitation, leading to catastrophic shifts on short time scales. Remediation scenarios capable of…
The habitable zones of main sequence stars have traditionally been defined as the range of orbits that intercept the appropriate amount of stellar flux to permit surface water on a planet. Terrestrial exoplanets discovered to orbit M stars…
Many aspects of anthropogenic global change, such as land cover change, biodiversity loss and the intensification of agricultural production, threaten the natural biosphere. These aspects seem somewhat disjunct and specific so that it is…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
We review how tides may impact the habitability of terrestrial-like planets. If such planets form around low-mass stars, then planets in the circumstellar habitable zone will be close enough to their host stars to experience strong tidal…
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…
We explore the potential multistability of the climate for a planet around the habitable zone. We focus on conditions reminiscent to those of the Earth system, but our investigation aims at presenting a general methodology for dealing with…
Global warming arises from 'temperature forcing', a net imbalance between energy fluxes entering and leaving the climate system and arising within it. Humanity introduces temperature forcing through greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture,…
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…
We seek to model the coupled evolution of a planet and a civilization through the era when energy harvesting by the civilization drives the planet into new and adverse climate states. In this way we ask if triggering "anthropocenes" of the…