Related papers: A climatic thermostat making Earth habitable
The atmospheric temperatures and concentrations of Earth's five most important, greenhouse gases, H$_2$O, CO$_2$, O$_3$, N$_2$O and CH$_4$ control the cloud-free, thermal radiative flux from the Earth to outer space. Over 1/3 million lines…
Life is a complex biological phenomenon represented by numerous chemical, physical and biological processes performed by a biothermodynamic system/cell/organism. Both living organisms and inanimate objects are subject to aging, a biological…
Ozone in Earth's atmosphere is known to have a radiative forcing effect on climate. Motivated by geochemical evidence for one or more nearby supernovae about 2.6 million years ago, we have investigated the question of whether a supernova at…
From life on other planets to virtual classrooms this thesis spans a wide array of research topics all based on how we see other worlds. Our understanding of everything from moon phases, the planets in our Solar System, and exoplanet…
About 4000 exoplanets have been confirmed since the year of 1992, and for most of the planets, the main parameters that can be measured are planetary radius and mass. Based on these two parameters, surface gravity can be estimated. In this…
We directly determine the sensitivity and time delay of Earth's surface temperature response to annual solar irradiance variations from 60 years of data. A two-layer energy balance model is developed to interpret the results. Explaining…
The climate of early Mars has been hotly debated for decades. Although most investigators believe that the geology indicates the presence of surface water, disagreement has persisted regarding how warm and wet the surface must have been and…
The sun's role in the earth's recent warming remains controversial even though there is a good deal of evidence to support the thesis that solar variations are a very significant factor in driving climate change both currently and in the…
Variations in the reflective properties of the bulk material that comprises the surface of land-dominated planets will affect the planetary energy balance by interacting differently with incident radiation from the host star. Furthermore,…
Earth went through at least two periods of global glaciation (i.e., ``Snowball Earth'' states) during the Neoproterozoic, the shortest of which (the Marinoan) may not have lasted sufficiently long for its termination to be explained by the…
We present a large ensemble of simulations of an Earth-like world with increasing insolation and rotation rate. Unlike previous work utilizing idealized aquaplanet configurations we focus our simulations on modern Earth-like topography. The…
With climate change, we are expecting more frequent extreme weather events in many regions worldwide. These events can trigger disruptive, deadly natural hazards, which catch the attention of the media and raise awareness in citizens and…
The climate system is a forced, dissipative, nonlinear, complex and heterogeneous system that is out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The system exhibits natural variability on many scales of motion, in time as well as space, and it is subject…
We present an extensive thermodynamic analysis of a hysteresis experiment performed on a simplified yet Earth-like climate model. We slowly vary the solar constant by 20% around the present value and detect a substantial bistability: for a…
In our modeling of the long-term carbon cycle we find potential multiple steady-states in Phanerozoic climates. We include the effects of biotic enhancement of weathering on land, organic carbon burial, oxidation of reduced organic carbon…
Meteorological data have been used to calculate refractive index fluctuations - the indicator of optical instability of the Earth's atmosphere. The calculations were made for standard pressure levels of the atmosphere in winter and summer.…
If life is sustained by a process of photosynthesis, not necessarily the same existing on Earth, the surface temperature of the star and the orbit of the host planet cannot be whatsoever. In fact the global life cycle, no matter how…
The habitable zone is the region around a star where standing bodies of liquid water can be stable on a planetary surface. Its width is often assumed to be dictated by the efficiency of the carbonate-silicate cycle, which has maintained…
A model is proposed to explain the observed correlation between monthly fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures. The model relies on the oceans being in a temperature-dependent equilibrium with the atmosphere. When…
The case for a much warmer climate on the early Earth than now is presented. The oxygen isotope record in sedimentary chert and the compelling case for a near constant isotopic oxygen composition of seawater over geologic time support…