Related papers: A climatic thermostat making Earth habitable

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…

The goal of this paper is to explore the potential multistability of the climate of a planet around the habitable zone. A thorough investigation of the thermodynamics of the climate system is performed for very diverse conditions of energy…

We identify a previously overlooked invariant governing planetary surface temperatures, expressed in terms of only two observables: solar irradiance and Bond albedo. The relation has universal applicability and accurately reproduces the…

The potential habitability of an exoplanet is traditionally assessed by determining if its orbit falls within the circumstellar `habitable zone' of its star, defined as the distance at which water could be liquid on the surface of a planet…

The general circulation of the atmosphere determines the long-term variability of weather processes. This circulation is driven by the temperature differences between the poles and the equator, causing air to move along the Earth's surface.…

Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…

After Earth's origin, our host star, the Sun, was shining 20 to 25 percent less brightly than today. Without greenhouse-like conditions to warm the atmosphere, our early planet would have been an ice ball and life may never have evolved.…

The potential habitability of known exoplanets is often categorized by a nominal equilibrium temperature assuming a Bond albedo of either 0.3, similar to Earth, or 0. As an indicator of habitability, this leaves much to be desired, because…

The thermodynamic approach shows that the total energy produced by humanity disrupts the thermal balance of the planet and causes counteraction, that is, climate change, which can slow down the progress of civilization. This outcome not…

The main determinants of Earth's absolute surface Temperature, T, are the solar constant, S, the Bond albedo, A, and the effective emissivity for thermal radiation, e. In this note we assume that the value of the effective emissivity, e =…

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…

There are four different stable climate states for pure water atmospheres, as might exist on so-called "waterworlds". I map these as a function of solar constant for planets ranging in size from Mars size to 10 Earth-mass. The states are:…

Before about 500 million years ago, most probably our planet experienced temporary snowball conditions, with continental and sea ices covering a large fraction of its surface. This points to a potential bistability of Earth's climate, that…

We propose a unified framework linking silicate weathering feedbacks, ecohydrological optimality and vegetation-climate interactions to explain Earth's Global Average Temperature evolution over the Phanerozoic. The framework integrates two…

Extrasolar terrestrial planets with the potential to host life might have large obliquities or be subject to strong obliquity variations. We revisit the habitability of oblique planets with an energy balance climate model (EBM) allowing for…

Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history. For example, molecular oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere…

The dominant paradigm in assigning "habitability"' to terrestrial planets is to define a circumstellar habitable zone: the locus of orbital radii in which the planet is neither too hot nor too cold for life as we know it. One dimensional…

As the number of detected rocky extrasolar planets increases, the question of whether their surfaces could be habitable is becoming more pertinent. On Earth, the long-term carbonate silicate cycle is able to regulate surface temperatures…

From the radiation balance diagram illustrating the IPCC reports one can estimate the power received by Earth from the sun at Pin = 342 W/m2 and the power consumed, remitted and reflected by the earth and its atmosphere at Pout = 599 kW/m2.…

We review the thermal history of the Universe. We obtain a new estimate for the thermal history of the Earth over the past four billion years using a biological thermometer based on (1) a rough estimate of the absolute time calibration of…