The discovery of planets orbiting stars other than the Sun has accelerated over the past decade, and this trend will continue as new space- and ground-based observatories employ next-generation instrumentation to search the skies for habitable worlds. However, many factors and processes can affect planetary habitability and must be understood to accurately determine a planet's habitability potential. While climate models have long been used to understand and predict climate and weather patterns on the Earth, a growing community of researchers has begun to apply these models to extrasolar planets. This work has provided a better understanding of how orbital, surface, and atmospheric properties affect planetary climate and habitability; how these climatic effects might change for different stellar and planetary environments; and how the habitability and observational signatures of newly discovered planets might be influenced by these climatic factors. This review summarizes the origins and evolution of the burgeoning field of exoplanet climatology, discusses recent work using a hierarchy of computer models to identify those planets most capable of supporting life, and offers a glimpse into future directions of this quickly evolving subfield of exoplanet science.
In recent years, numerical models that were developed for Earth have been adapted to study exoplanetary climates to understand how the broad range of possible exoplanetary properties affects their climate state. The recent discovery and upcoming characterization of nearby rocky exoplanets opens an avenue toward understanding the processes that shape planetary climates and lead to the persistent habitability of Earth. In this review, we summarize recent advances in understanding the climate of rocky exoplanets, including their atmospheric structure, chemistry, evolution, and atmospheric and oce…
We have reconstructed longitude-latitude maps of column dust optical depth (CDOD) for Martian year (MY) 34 (May 5, 2017 --- March 23, 2019) using observations by the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Our methodology works by gridding standard and newly available estimates of CDOD from MCS limb observations, using the "iterative weighted binning" methodology. In this work, we reconstruct four gridded CDOD maps per sol, at different Mars Universal Times. Together with the seasonal and day-to-day variability, the use of several maps per sol allows to…
Clouds form on extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs where lightning could occur. Lightning is a tracer of atmospheric convection, cloud formation and ionization processes as known from the Solar System, and may be significant for the formation of prebiotic molecules. We study lightning climatology for the different atmospheric environments of Earth, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. We present lightning distribution maps for Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, and flash densities for these planets and Venus, based on optical and/or radio measurements from the WWLLN and STARNET radio networks, the LIS/OTD satel…
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 can have at least two different (statistical) equilibrium states for the same external forcing (i.e., solar radiation). Here we explore the probability of finding bistable climates in earth-like exoplanets, and consider the properties of planetary climates obtained by varying the semi-major orbital axis (thus, received stellar radiation), eccentricity and ob…
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）
Even though it was not designed as an exoplanetary research mission, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) has been opportunistically used for a novel experiment, in which Earth serves as a proxy exoplanet. More than two years of DSCOVR Earth images were employed to produce time series of multi-wavelength, single-point light sources, in order to extract information on planetary rotation, cloud patterns, surface type, and orbit around the Sun. In what follows, we assume that these properties of the Earth are unknown, and instead attempt to derive them from first principles. These conclusi…
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic observations, or to assess the probability of habitable worlds. To first order, climate primarily depends on 1) The atmospheric composition and the volatile inventory; 2) The incident stellar flux; 3) The tidal evolution of the planetary spin, which can notably lock a planet with a permanent night side. The atmospheric composition and mass depends on complex processes …
Cycling of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and interior of rocky planets can stabilize global climate and enable planetary surface temperatures above freezing over geologic time. However, variations in global carbon budget and unstable feedback cycles between planetary sub-systems may destabilize the climate of rocky exoplanets toward regimes unknown in the Solar System. Here, we perform clear-sky atmospheric radiative transfer and surface weathering simulations to probe the stability of climate equilibria for rocky, ocean-bearing exoplanets at instellations relevant for planetary system…
Simulation of the spin evolution of some selected exoplanets and inferences on their climate
Università di Padova（帕多瓦大学）；Università di Bari（巴里大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare（意大利国家核物理研究所）；Università del Salento（萨伦托大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica（意大利国家天体物理研究所）
Large ground- and space-based telescopes will be able to observe Earth-like planets in the near future. We explore how different planetary surfaces can strongly influence the climate, atmospheric composition, and remotely detectable spectra of terrestrial rocky exoplanets in the habitable zone depending on the host star's incident irradiation spectrum for a range of Sun-like host stars from F0V to K7V. We update a well-tested 1D climate-photochemistry model to explore the changes of a planetary environment for different surfaces for different host stars. Our results show that using a wavelengt…
Eccentricity is an important orbital parameter. Understanding its effect on planetary climate and habitability is critical for us to search for a habitable world beyond our solar system. The orbital configurations of M-dwarf planets are always tidally-locked at resonance states, which are quite different from those around Sun-like stars. M-dwarf planets need to be investigated separately. Here we use a comprehensive three-dimensional atmospheric general circulation model to systematically investigate how eccentricity influences climate and habitability of M-dwarf exoplanets. The simulation res…
Previous studies have demonstrated that continental carbon-silicate weathering is important to the continued habitability of a terrestrial planet. Despite this, few studies have considered the influence of land on the climate of a tidally-locked planet. In this work we use the Met Office Unified Model, coupled to a land surface model, to investigate the climate effects of a continent located at the sub-stellar point. We choose to use the orbital and planetary parameters of Proxima Centauri B as a template, to allow comparison with the work of others. A region of the surface where $T_{\text{s}}…
We investigate 3D atmosphere dynamics for tidally locked terrestrial planets with an Earth-like atmosphere and irradiation for different rotation periods ($P_{rot}=1-100$ days) and planet sizes ($R_P=1-2 R_{Earth}$) with unprecedented fine detail. We could precisely identify three climate state transition regions that are associated with phase transitions in standing tropical and extra tropical Rossby waves. We confirm that the climate on fast rotating planets may assume multiple states ($P_{rot}\leq 12$ days for $R_P=2 R_{Earth}$). Our study is, however, the first to identify the type of plan…
One popular view of Venus' climate history describes a world that has spent much of its life with surface liquid water, plate tectonics, and a stable temperate climate. Part of the basis for this optimistic scenario is the high deuterium to hydrogen ratio from the Pioneer Venus mission that was interpreted to imply Venus had a shallow ocean's worth of water throughout much of its history. Another view is that Venus had a long lived (approximately 100 million year) primordial magma ocean with a CO2 and steam atmosphere. Venus' long lived steam atmosphere would sufficient time to dissociate most…
The recent detections of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars and the promise of characterizing their atmospheres motivates a need to understand how the diversity of possible planetary parameters affects the climate of terrestrial planets. In this work, we investigate the atmospheric circulation and climate of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting both Sun-like and M-dwarf stars over a wide swath of possible planetary parameters, including the planetary rotation period, surface pressure, incident stellar flux, surface gravity, planetary radius, and cloud particle size. We do so using …
The TRAPPIST-1 Habitable Atmosphere Intercomparison (THAI) project was initiated to compare 3D climate models that are commonly used for predicting theoretical climates of habitable zone extrasolar planets. One of the core models studied as part of THAI is ExoCAM, an independently curated exoplanet branch of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 1.2.1. ExoCAM has been used for studying atmospheres of terrestrial extrasolar planets around a variety of stars. To accompany the THAI project and provide a primary reference, here we describe …
Using a 3D general circulation model (GCM), we investigate the sensitivity of the climate of tidally-locked Earth-like exoplanets, Trappist-1e and Proxima Centauri b, to the choice of a convection parameterization. Compared to a mass-flux convection parameterization, a simplified convection adjustment parameterization leads to a $>$60% decrease of the cloud albedo, increasing the mean day-side temperature by $\approx$10 K. The representation of convection also affects the atmospheric conditions of the night side, via a change in planetary-scale wave patterns. As a result, using the convection …
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 current progress in the detection of terrestrial type exoplanets has opened a new avenue in the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres and in the search for biosignatures of life with the upcoming ground-based and space missions. To specify the conditions favorable for the origin, development and sustainment of life as we know it in other worlds, we need to understand the nature of astrospheric, atmospheric and surface environments of exoplanets in habitable zones around G-K-M dwarfs including our young Sun. Global environment is formed by propagated disturbances from the planet-host…
Terrestrial-type exoplanets orbiting nearby red dwarf stars (M dwarfs) are the first potentially habitable exoplanets suitable for atmospheric characterization in the near future. Understanding the stability of water in cold-trap regions on such planets is critical because it directly impacts transmission spectroscopy observations, the global energy budget, and long-term surface water evolution. Here we diagnose the humidity distribution in idealized general circulation model (GCM) simulations of terrestrial-type exoplanets. We use the `tracer of last saturation' technique to study the saturat…
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 climatic feedbacks. Thus, assessments of the habitable zone require models to include a complete treatment of the hydrological cycle over geologic time. Here, we use the Community Atmosphere Model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research to study the evolution of climate for an Earth-like planet at constant CO2, under a wide range of stellar fluxes …
Clouds are ubiquitous\, -- \,they arise for every solar system planet that possesses an atmosphere and have also been suggested as a leading mechanism for obscuring spectral features in exoplanet observations. As exoplanet observations continue to improve, there is a need for efficient and general planetary climate models that appropriately handle the possible cloudy atmospheric environments that arise on these worlds. We generate a new 1D radiative-convective terrestrial planet climate model that self-consistently handles patchy clouds through a parameterized microphysical treatment of conden…
The Great Oxidation Event was a period during which Earth's atmospheric oxygen (O$_2$) concentrations increased from $\sim 10^{-5}$ times its present atmospheric level (PAL) to near modern levels, marking the start of the Proterozoic geological eon 2.4 billion years ago. Using WACCM6, an Earth System Model, we simulate the atmosphere of Earth-analogue exoplanets with O$_2$ mixing ratios between 0.1% and 150% PAL. Using these simulations, we calculate the reflection/emission spectra over multiple orbits using the Planetary Spectrum Generator. We highlight how observer angle, albedo, chemistry, …
Resolving Orbital and Climate Keys of Earth and Extraterrestrial Environments with Dynamics (ROCKE-3D) is a 3-Dimensional General Circulation Model (GCM) developed at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for the modeling of atmospheres of Solar System and exoplanetary terrestrial planets. Its parent model, known as ModelE2 (Schmidt et al. 2014), is used to simulate modern and 21st Century Earth and near-term paleo-Earth climates. ROCKE-3D is an ongoing effort to expand the capabilities of ModelE2 to handle a broader range of atmospheric conditions including higher and lower atmospheric…
Planets residing in circumstellar habitable zones (CHZs) offer our best opportunities to test hypotheses of life's potential pervasiveness and complexity. Constraining the precise boundaries of habitability and its observational discriminants is critical to maximizing our chances at remote life detection with future instruments. Conventionally, calculations of the inner edge of the habitable zone (IHZ) have been performed using both 1D radiative-convective and 3D general circulation models. However, these models lack interactive three-dimensional chemistry and do not resolve the mesosphere and…
The Effect of Planetary Rotation Period on Clouds in a Global Climate Model with a Bin Microphysics Scheme
University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）；Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校大气与空间物理实验室）；Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校大气与海洋科学系）；NASA GSFC Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration（NASA戈达德太空飞行中心塞勒斯系外行星环境合作组织）；NASA NExSS Virtual Planetary Laboratory（NASA NExSS虚拟行星实验室）；Blue Marble Space Institute of Science（蓝大理石空间科学研究院）；Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校环境科学研究合作研究所）；Chemical Sciences Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration（美国国家海洋和大气管理局化学科学实验室）
A broad exploration of climate and observability of close-in rocky exoplanets: applications to Ross 128 b
Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève（日内瓦天文台，日内瓦大学）；Centre pour la Vie dans l’Univers, Université de Genève（宇宙生命中心，日内瓦大学）；Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, École Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, École Polytechnique, Institut Poytechnique de Paris（动态气象实验室/IPSL，法国国家科学研究中心，索邦大学，巴黎高等师范学院，PSL研究大学，巴黎综合理工学院，巴黎理工学院）；Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS（波尔多天体物理实验室，波尔多大学，法国国家科学研究中心）；Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG（格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学，法国国家科学研究中心）；Université de Genève（日内瓦大学）
Although our solar system features predominantly circular orbits, the exoplanets discovered so far indicate that this is the exception rather than the rule. This could have crucial consequences for exoplanet climates, both because eccentric terrestrial exoplanets could have extreme seasonal variation, and because giant planets on eccentric orbits could excite Milankovitch-like variations of a potentially habitable terrestrial planet,Äôs eccentricity, on timescales of thousands-to-millions of years. A particularly interesting implication concerns the fact that the Earth is thought to have gone …
While recently discovered exotic new planet-types have both challenged our imaginations and broadened our knowledge of planetary system workings, perhaps the most compelling objective of exoplanet science is to detect and characterize habitable and possibly inhabited worlds orbiting in other star systems. For the foreseeable future, characterizations of extrasolar planets will be made via remote sensing of planetary spectroscopic and temporal signals, along with careful fitting of this data to advanced models of planets and their atmospheres. Terrestrial planets are small and significantly mor…
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…
Planetary climates are strongly affected by planetary orbital parameters such as obliquity, eccentricity, and precession. In exoplanetary systems, exo-terrestrial planets should have various obliquities. High-obliquity planets would have extreme seasonal cycles due to the seasonal change of the distribution of the insolation. Here, we introduce the Non-hydrostatic ICosahedral Atmospheric Model(NICAM), a global cloud-resolving model, to investigate the climate of high-obliquity planets. This model can explicitly simulate a three-dimensional cloud distribution and vertical transports of water va…
The ideal exoplanets to search for life are those within a star's habitable zone. However, even within the habitable zone planets can still develop uninhabitable climate states. Sustaining a temperate climate over geologic ($\sim$Gyr) timescales requires a planet contain sufficient internal energy to power a planetary-scale carbon cycle. A major component of a rocky planet's energy budget is the heat produced by the decay of radioactive elements, especially $^{40}$K, $^{232}$Th, $^{235}$U and $^{238}$U. As the planet ages and these elements decay, this radiogenic energy source dwindles. Here w…
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 …
Motivated by the important role of the ocean in the Earth climate system, here we investigate possible scenarios of ocean circulations on exoplanets using a one-layer shallow water ocean model. Specifically, we investigate how planetary rotation rate, wind stress, fluid eddy viscosity and land structure (a closed basin vs. a reentrant channel) influence the pattern and strength of wind-driven ocean circulations. The meridional variation of the Coriolis force, arising from planetary rotation and the spheric shape of the planets, induces the western intensification of ocean circulations. Our sim…
Our knowledge of planets' orbital dynamics, which was based on Solar System studies, has been challenged by the diversity of exoplanetary systems. Around cool and ultra cool dwarfs, the influence of tides on the orbital and spin evolution of planets can strongly affect their climate and their capacity to host surface liquid water. We illustrate the role of tides and dynamics with the extreme case of planets orbiting around brown dwarfs. In multiple planet systems, the eccentricity is excited by planet-planet interactions. Planets are therefore heated up from the inside by the tidally-induced f…
It is possible to learn a great deal about exoplanet atmospheres even when we cannot spatially resolve the planets from their host stars. In this chapter, we overview the basic techniques used to characterize transiting exoplanets - transmission spectroscopy, emission and reflection spectroscopy, and full-orbit phase curve observations. We discuss practical considerations, including current and future observing facilities and best practices for measuring precise spectra. We also highlight major observational results on the chemistry, climate, and cloud properties of exoplanets.
It has been suggested that the recently discovered exoplanet GJ581d might be able to support liquid water due to its relatively low mass and orbital distance. However, GJ581d receives 35% less stellar energy than Mars and is probably locked in tidal resonance, with extremely low insolation at the poles and possibly a permanent night side. Under such conditions, it is unknown whether any habitable climate on the planet would be able to withstand global glaciation and / or atmospheric collapse. Here we present three-dimensional climate simulations that demonstrate GJ581d will have a stable atmos…
The recent discoveries of terrestrial exoplanets and super-Earths extending over a broad range of orbital and physical parameters suggest that these planets will span a wide range of climatic regimes. Characterization of the atmospheres of warm super-Earths has already begun and will be extended to smaller and more distant planets over the coming decade. The habitability of these worlds may be strongly affected by their three-dimensional atmospheric circulation regimes, since the global climate feedbacks that control the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone including transitions to Snow…
The EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope (EXCITE): A balloon-borne mission to measure spectroscopic phase curves of transiting hot Jupiters
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心）；Brown University（布朗大学）；Arizona State University（亚利桑那州立大学）；La Sapienza Università di Roma（罗马第一大学）；Cornell University（康奈尔大学）；StarSpec Technologies Inc.（StarSpec科技有限公司）；Center for Space Sciences and Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩县分校空间科学与技术中心）
Exoplanet climate characterization with transit asymmetries -- A comprehensive population study from the optical to the infrared
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences（奥地利科学院空间研究所）；Institute for Theoretical Physics and Computational Physics, Graz University of Technology（格拉茨工业大学理论与计算物理研究所）
Central stages in the evolution of rocky, potentially habitable planets may play out under atmospheric conditions with a large inventory of non-dilute condensable components. Variations in condensate retention and accompanying changes in local lapse rate may substantially affect planetary climate and surface conditions, but there is currently no general theory to effectively describe such atmospheres. In this article, expanding on the work by Li et al. (2018), we generalize the single-component moist pseudoadiabat derivation in Pierrehumbert (2010) to allow for multiple condensing components o…
