Habitable Zones & Global Climate

Main Ways In Which Stars Influence The Climate And Surface Habitability Of Their Planets

By Keith Cowing

astro-ph.EP

April 14, 2021

Filed under habitability

Main Ways In Which Stars Influence The Climate And Surface Habitability Of Their Planets — First panel: Zonal annual mean average of the incident flux on an asynchronouslyrotating planet receiving a total of 1362 W m−2 (i.e. the solar constant on Earth), for four distinct obliquities (0, 23.5, 50, 90◦ ). Second panel: Incident flux on a synchronouslyrotating planet (also receiving a total of 1362 W m−2 ) versus substellar longitude. The zonal fluxes were calculated using equation 1 of Nadeau and McGehee (2017).

We present a brief overview of the main effects by which a star will have an impact (positive or negative) on the surface habitability of planets in orbit around it.

Specifically, we review how spectral, spatial and temporal variations in the incident flux on a planet can alter the atmosphere and climate of a planet and thus its surface habitability. For illustrative purposes, we emphasize the differences between planets orbiting solar-type stars and late M-stars. The latter are of particular interest as they constitute the first sample of potentially habitable exoplanets accessible for surface and atmospheric characterization in the coming years.

Martin Turbet, Franck Selsis

Comments: 20 pages, 5 figures, Contribution for the Proceedings of the Evry Schatzman School 2019 on “Star-Planet Interactions”. EDP, Eds Bigot, Bouvier, Lebreton, Chiavassa.”
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2104.06391 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2104.06391v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Martin Turbet
[v1] Tue, 13 Apr 2021 17:52:56 UTC (2,683 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.06391
Astrobiology,

Keith Cowing

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) 🖖🏻

Follow on Twitter