最近有人提出,在宜居带外部区域的类地行星经历了不稳定的气候,在冰川和冰川消退的气候状态之间反复循环(Menou 2015)。虽然这一结果已经得到证实,并扩展到解释早期火星气候记录(Haqq-Misra et al. 2016; Batalha et al. 2016),但所有现有的工作都依赖于高度理想化的低维气候模型。在这里,我们确认,气候周期的现象仍然在三维地球气候模型具有相当多的自由度。为了规避Gyr时间尺度上集成气候的计算障碍,我们设计了一个混合的0 D-3D积分器,它使用一个大气环流模型(GCM)作为一个短的松弛步骤,沿着一个长的进化气候序列。我们发现,GCM气候循环是定性一致的低维结果。这就为我们建立了一个更坚实的基础,即外层宜居带行星可能更容易在短暂的冰川状态下被发现。
英文摘要:
It has recently been proposed that Earth-like planets in the outer regions of the habitable zone experience unstable climates, repeatedly cycling between glaciated and deglaciated climatic states (Menou 2015). While this result has been confirmed and also extended to explain early Mars climate records (Haqq-Misra et al. 2016; Batalha et al. 2016), all existing work relies on highly idealized low-dimensional climate models. Here, we confirm that the phenomenology of climate cycles remains in 3D Earth climate models with considerably more degrees of freedom. To circumvent the computational barrier of integrating climate on Gyr timescales, we design a hybrid 0D-3D integrator which uses a general circulation model (GCM) as a short relaxation step along a long evolutionary climate sequence. We find that GCM climate cycles are qualitatively consistent with reported low-dimensional results. This establishes on a firmer ground the notion that outer habitable zone planets may be preferentially found in transiently glaciated states.
Global climate evolution models for habitable earthlike planets do not consider the effect of ocean salinity on land ice formation through the hydrological cycle. We consider two categories of such planets: planets with deep oceans, but intrinsically high salinities due to the weaker salt removal process by hydrothermal vents; and planets with shallow oceans, where the increase in salt content and decrease in ocean area during the onset of glaciation cause a negative feedback, helping delay the spread of land ice. We developed a toy climate model of a habitable planet on the verge of an ice ag…
Not Earth-like Yet Temperate? More Generic Climate Feedback Configurations Still Allow Temperate Climates in Habitable Zone Exo-Earth Candidates
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona(月球与行星实验室,亚利桑那大学);Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona(斯图尔德天文台,亚利桑那大学);James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences, The University of Arizona(詹姆斯·C·怀扬特光学科学学院,亚利桑那大学)
The habitable zone concept is important because it focuses the scientific search for extraterrestrial life and aids the planning of future telescopes. Recent work has shown that planets near the outer edge of the habitable zone might not actually be able to stay warm and habitable if CO$_2$ outgassing rates are not large enough to maintain high CO$_2$ partial pressures against removal by silicate weathering. In this paper I use simple equations for the climate and CO$_2$ budget of a planet in the habitable zone that can capture the qualitative behavior of the system. With these equations I der…
A large number of studies have responded to the growing body of confirmed terrestrial habitable zone exoplanets by presenting models of various possible climates. However, the impact of the partial pressure of background gases such as N$_2$ has not yet been well-explored, despite the abundance of N$_2$ in Earth's atmosphere and the lack of constraints on its typical abundance in terrestrial planet atmospheres. We use PlaSim, a fast 3D climate model, to simulate many hundreds of climates around Sun-like stars with varying N$_2$ partial pressures, instellations, and surface characteristics to id…
To identify promising exoplanets for atmospheric characterization and to make the best use of observational data, a thorough understanding of their atmospheres is needed. 3D general circulation models (GCMs) are one of the most comprehensive tools available for this task and will be used to interpret observations of temperate rocky exoplanets. Due to parameterization choices made in GCMs, they can produce different results, even for the same planet. Employing four widely-used exoplanetary GCMs -- ExoCAM, LMD-G, ROCKE-3D and the UM -- we continue the TRAPPIST-1 Habitable Atmosphere Intercompari…
Understanding when global glaciations occur on Earth-like planets is a major challenge in climate evolution research. Most models of how greenhouse gases like CO2 evolve with time on terrestrial planets are deterministic, but the complex, nonlinear nature of Earth's climate history motivates study of non-deterministic climate models. Here a maximally simple stochastic model of CO2 evolution and climate on an Earth-like planet with an imperfect CO2 thermostat is investigated. It is shown that as stellar luminosity is increased in this model, the decrease in the average atmospheric CO concentrat…
We present self-consistent three-dimensional climate simulations of possible habitable states for the newly discovered Habitable Zone Earth-sized planet, TOI-700 d. We explore a variety of atmospheric compositions, pressures, and rotation states for both ocean-covered and completely desiccated planets in order to assess the planet's potential for habitability. For all 20 of our simulated cases, we use our climate model outputs to synthesize transmission spectra, combined-light spectra, and integrated broadband phase curves. These climatologically-informed observables will help the community as…
A planet's surface conditions can significantly impact its climate and habitability. In this study, we use the 3D general circulation model ExoPlaSim to systematically vary dayside land cover on a synchronously rotating, temperate rocky planet under two extreme and opposite continent configurations, in which either all of the land or all of the ocean is centred at the substellar point. We identify water vapour and sea ice as competing drivers of climate, and we isolate land-dependent regimes under which one or the other dominates. We find that the amount and configuration of land can change th…
Rocky planets hosted by close-in extrasolar systems are likely to be tidally locked in 1:1 spin-orbit resonance, a configuration where they exhibit permanent dayside and nightside. Because of the resulting day-night temperature gradient, the climate and large-scale circulation of these planets are strongly determined by their atmospheric stability against collapse, which designates the runaway condensation of greenhouse gases. To better constrain the surface conditions of rocky planets located in the habitable zone of their host star, it is therefore crucial to elucidate the mechanisms that go…
High-CO2 Climates and Observables in the Outer Habitable Zone
University of California, Riverside(加州大学河滨分校);Blue Marble Space Institute of Science(蓝色大理石空间科学研究所);NASA Goddard Space Flight Center(美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心);American University(美利坚大学);Sorbonne Université(索邦大学);Ecole Normale Supérieure(巴黎高等师范学院);PSL Research University(巴黎文理研究大学);Ecole Polytechnique(巴黎综合理工学院);Univ. Bordeaux(波尔多大学)
Venus's past climate evolution is uncertain. General circulation model simulations permit a habitable climate as late as ~0.7 Ga, and there is suggestive-albeit inconclusive-evidence for previous liquid water from surface geomorphology and mineralogy. However, it is unclear whether a habitable past can be reconciled with Venus's inferred atmospheric evolution. In particular, the lack of leftover atmospheric oxygen argues against recent water loss. Here, we apply a fully coupled model of Venus's atmospheric-interior-climate evolution from post-accretion magma ocean to present. The model self-co…
With the commissioning of powerful, new-generation telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the ground-based Extremely Large Telescopes, the first characterization of a high molecular weight atmosphere around a temperate rocky exoplanet is imminent. Atmospheric simulations and synthetic observables of target exoplanets are essential to prepare and interpret these observations. Here we report the results of the first part of the TRAPPIST-1 Habitable Atmosphere Intercomparison (THAI) project, which compares 3D numerical simulations performed with four state-of-the-art global …
Assessing the Climate and Habitability of Tidally Locked Rocky Exoplanets
INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste(意大利国家天体物理研究所的里雅斯特天文台);CNR – Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse(国家研究委员会地球科学与地质资源研究所);Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe(宇宙基础物理研究所);Centro di Ricerca Nazionale in High Performance Computing, Big Data e Quantum Computing (ICSC)(高性能计算、大数据和量子计算国家研究中心);Politecnico di Torino – DIATI(都灵理工大学);CNR – Istituto di Scienze dell’Atmosfera e del Clima(国家研究委员会大气与气候科学研究所);CSIC-INTA – Centro de Astrobiología(西班牙国家科学研究委员会-国家航空航天技术研究所天体生物学中心);Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”(罗马第二大学);Università degli Studi di Padova(帕多瓦大学)
Cloud is critical for planetary climate and habitability, but it is also one of the most challenging parts of studying planets in and beyond the solar system. Here we use a cloud-resolving model (CRM) with high resolution (2 km) in a two-dimensional (2D) configuration to simulate the clouds and circulation on tidally locked aqua-planets. We find that the substellar area is covered by deep convective clouds, the nightside is dominated by low-level clouds, and these two are linked by a global-scale Walker circulation. We further find that a uniform surface warming causes the substellar cloud wid…
Rocky planets with temperate conditions provide the best chance for discovering habitable worlds and life outside the Solar System. In the last decades, new instrumental facilities and large observational campaigns have been driven by the quest for habitable worlds. Climate models aimed at studying the habitability of rocky planets are essential tools to pay off these technological and observational endeavours. In this context, we present EOS-ESTM, a fast and flexible model aimed at exploring the impact on habitability of multiple climate factors, including those unconstrained by observations.…
A large fraction of known terrestrial-size exoplanets located in the Habitable Zone of M-dwarfs are expected to be tidally-locked. Numerous efforts have been conducted to study the climate of such planets, using in particular 3-D Global Climate Models (GCM). One of the biggest challenges in simulating such an extreme environment is to properly represent the effects of sub-grid convection. Most GCMs use either a simplistic convective-adjustment parametrization or sophisticated (e.g., mass flux scheme) Earth-tuned parametrizations. One way to improve the representation of convection is to study …
In the conventional habitable zone (HZ) concept, a CO$_{2}$-H$_2$O greenhouse maintains surface liquid water. Through the water-mediated carbonate-silicate weathering cycle, atmospheric CO$_{2}$ partial pressure (pCO$_{2}$) responds to changes in surface temperature, stabilizing the climate over geologic timescales. We show that this weathering feedback ought to produce a log-linear relationship between pCO$_{2}$ and incident flux on Earth-like planets in the HZ. However, this trend has scatter because geophysical and physicochemical parameters can vary, such as land area for weathering and CO…
Accelerating exoplanet climate modelling: A machine learning approach to complement 3D GCM grid simulations
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences(空间研究所,奥地利科学院);Institute for Theoretical Physics and Computational Physics, Graz University of Technology(理论物理与计算物理研究所,格拉茨技术大学);Institute of Physics, University of Graz(物理研究所,格拉茨大学)
Rocky planets orbiting M-dwarf stars are among the most promising and abundant astronomical targets for detecting habitable climates. Planets in the M-dwarf habitable zone are likely synchronously rotating, such that we expect significant day-night temperature differences, and potentially limited fractional habitability. Previous studies have focused on scenarios where fractional habitability is confined to the substellar or "eye" region, but in this paper we explore the possibility of planets with terminator habitability, defined by the existence of a habitable band at the transition between …