Related papers: Characterizing the Radiative-Convective Structure …
We present an analytic 1-D radiative-convective model of the thermal structure of planetary atmospheres. Our model assumes that thermal radiative transfer is gray and can be represented by the two-stream approximation. Model atmospheres are…
Next-generation space telescopes will observe the atmospheres of rocky planets orbiting nearby M-dwarfs. Understanding these observations will require well-developed theory in addition to numerical simulations. Here we present theoretical…
During accretion, the young rocky planets are so hot that they become endowed with a magma ocean. From that moment, the mantle convective thermal flux control the cooling of the planet and an atmosphere is created by outgassing. This…
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…
Motivated by recent detection of transiting high-density super-Earths, we explore the detectability of hot rocky super-Earths orbiting very close to their host stars. In the environment hot enough for their rocky surfaces to be molten, they…
The climates of terrestrial planets are largely determined by the composition of their atmospheres and spectral types of their host stars. Previous studies suggest a wide range of carbon species abundances (CO\textsubscript{2}, CO, and…
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…
The Milky Way Galaxy is literally teeming with exoplanets; thousands of planets have been discovered, with thousands more planet candidates identified. Terrestrial-like planets are quite common around other stars, and are expected to be…
One-dimensional (vertical) models of planetary atmospheres typically balance the net solar and internal energy fluxes against the net thermal radiative and convective heat fluxes to determine an equilibrium thermal structure. Thus,simple…
A radiative-convective climate model is used to calculate stratospheric temperatures and water vapor concentrations for ozone-free atmospheres warmer than that of modern Earth. Cold, dry stratospheres are predicted at low surface…
We show that collision-induced absorption allows molecular hydrogen to act as an incondensible greenhouse gas, and that bars or tens of bars of primordial H2-He mixtures can maintain surface temperatures above the freezing point of water…
Super-Earths span a wide range of bulk densities, indicating a diversity in interior conditions beyond that seen in the solar system. In particular, an emerging population of low-density super-Earths may be explained by volatile-rich…
In an atmosphere, a cloud condensation region is characterized by a strong vertical gradient in the abundance of the related condensing species. On Earth, the ensuing gradient of mean molecular weight has relatively few dynamical…
Young terrestrial planets can capture or outgas hydrogen-rich atmospheres with tens to hundreds of bars of H2, which persist for 100 Myrs or longer. Although the earliest habitable conditions on Earth and terrestrial exoplanets could thus…
Atmospheric convection behaves differently in hydrogen-rich atmospheres compared to higher mean molecular weight atmospheres due to compositional gradients of tracers. Previous 1D studies predict that when a condensible tracer exceeds a…
Condensible substances are nearly ubiquitous in planetary atmospheres. For the most familiar case-water vapor in Earth's present climate-the condensible gas is dilute, in the sense that its concentration is everywhere small relative to the…
High obliquity planets represent potentially extreme limits of terrestrial climate, as they exhibit large seasonality, a reversed annual-mean pole-to-equator gradient of stellar heating, and novel cryospheres. A suite of 3-D global climate…
Atmospheric energy transport is central to the cooling of primordial magma oceans. Theoretical studies of atmospheres on lava planets have assumed that convection is the only process involved in setting the atmospheric temperature…
We generalize the problem of the semi-gray model to cases in which a non-negligible fraction of the stellar radiation falls on the long-wavelength range, and/or that the planetary long-wavelength emission penetrates into the transparent…
Over large timescales, a terrestrial planet may be driven towards spin-orbit synchronous rotation by tidal forces. In this particular configuration, the planet exhibits permanent dayside and nightside, which may induce strong day-night…