Habitable Zones & Global Climate

Earth's Polar Night Boundary Layer As An Analogue For Dark Side Inversions On Synchronously Rotating Terrestrial Exoplanets

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.EP
March 15, 2020
Filed under
Earth's Polar Night Boundary Layer As An Analogue For Dark Side Inversions On Synchronously Rotating Terrestrial Exoplanets
Earth
NASA

A key factor in determining the potential habitability of synchronously rotating planets is the strength of the atmospheric boundary layer inversion between the dark side surface and the free atmosphere.

Here we analyse data obtained from polar night measurements at the South Pole and Alert Canada, which are the closest analogues on Earth to conditions on the dark sides of synchronously rotating exoplanets without and with a maritime influence, respectively. On Earth, such inversions rarely exceed 30 K in strength, because of the effect of turbulent mixing induced by phenomena such as so-called mesoscale slope winds, which have horizontal scales of 10s to 100s of km, suggesting a similar constraint to near-surface dark side inversions.

We discuss the sensitivity of inversion strength to factors such as orography and the global-scale circulation, and compare them to a simulation of the p– lanet Proxima Centauri b. Our results demonstrate the importance of comparisons with Earth data in exoplanet research, and highlight the need for further studies of the exoplanet atmospheric collapse problem using mesoscale and eddy-resolving models.

Manoj Joshi, Andrew Elvidge, Robin Wordsworth, Denis Sergeev
(Submitted on 13 Mar 2020)

Comments: Accepted by Astrophysical Journal Letters; 14 pages, 3 figures
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2003.06306 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2003.06306v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Manoj Joshi
[v1] Fri, 13 Mar 2020 14:04:56 UTC (759 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.06306
Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻