Atmospheres, Climate, Weather Archives

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Away Teams & Field Reports, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exploration Gear & Tech, Press Release, Tricorders & Sensors

Tricorder Tech: Away Team Gas Detection With A Smartphone

by Keith CowingAugust 22, 2023August 22, 2023

Editor’s note: A key aspect to understanding a new location during an Away Team Mission is understanding the local atmosphere and how it is affected by – and influences – […]

Cloud-computing work-queue for exploring a large parameter space of atmospheres. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report

PyATMOS: A Scalable Grid of Hypothetical Planetary Atmospheres

by Keith CowingAugust 21, 2023August 21, 2023

Cloud computing offers an opportunity to run compute-resource intensive climate models at scale by parallelising model runs such that datasets useful to the exoplanet community can be produced efficiently.

LIFE-detectable exoplanets, as in Fig. 1, but colour-coding each planet according to the integration time (in hours) required to be detected with LIFE’s reference configuration. Appendix D: List of planets only detect -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). X. Detectability Of Currently Known Exoplanets And Synergies With Future IR/O/UV Reflected-starlight Imaging Missions

by Keith CowingAugust 21, 2023August 21, 2023

The next generation of space-based observatories will characterize the atmospheres of low-mass, temperate exoplanets with the direct-imaging technique.

Starfield around TOI-4336.01 in TESS Sector 38 used by TRICERATOPS in its FPP and nearby false positive probability (NFPP) calculations. Left: plot of the positions of each star within 2.5 arcminutes centered on the target with the color of each point representing the TESS magnitude of the star. The overlaid grid denotes the TESS pixel borders with pixel column and row numbers labeled on the X and Y axis, respectively. The dashed gray circle represents a distance of 2.5 arcminutes and the red squares denote the extraction aperture used by the SPOC when generating the PDC SAP light curve for this TESS sector. Right: Same as left but instead of displaying each background star near the target, TESS data are shown. The SPOC extraction aperture is in red and the colormap represents the flux captured by each TESS pixel. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Identification Of The Top TESS Objects Of Interest For Atmospheric Characterization Of Transiting Exoplanets With JWST

by Keith CowingAugust 21, 2023August 21, 2023

JWST has ushered in an era of unprecedented ability to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres. While there are over 5,000 confirmed planets, more than 4,000 TESS planet candidates are still unconfirmed and […]

Cross plots of log(fO2) expressed as ∆FMQ, resulting from pMELTS calculations, shown at 1 GPa (top) and 4 GPa (bottom) and 1373.15 K. From left to right, columns show the dependence of ∆FMQ on bulk mantle Mg/Si, Al/Si, stellar metallicity [Fe/H]⋆, and the total refractory oxygen present in the mantle, Orock (i.e., a sum over oxygen in all metal oxides). Each point (N = 1198) represents a bulk mantle composition (Ca-Na-Fe-Mg-Al-Si-O-Ti) inferred for a planet-hosting star in the Hypatia Catalog, assuming Fe3+/ΣFe = 3% and Femantle/(Fecore + Femantle) = 12%. Points are coloured by the Fe2O3 wt.% composition of orthopyroxene (opx). Histograms of the ∆FMQ distribution are projected on the y-axis. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report

A Mineralogical Reason Why All Exoplanets Cannot Be Equally Oxidising

by Keith CowingAugust 21, 2023August 21, 2023

From core to atmosphere, the oxidation states of elements in a planet shape its character. Oxygen fugacity (fO2) is one parameter indicating these likely oxidation states.

Mars’s potential for prebiotic record. Evidence for subaerial wet–dry cycling could be relevant to the early Noachian–Hesperian transition period during which both intrabasin sulfates and smectite clays formed1. The timing for a Gale Crater impact (diamond) with uncertainty covers the different reported ages41,42. Exogenic material flux is a proxy for the delivery of organics to the surface (Extended Data Fig.5). The timing for valley networks, fans and deltas is derived from crater counting on geomorphic features3. -- Nature

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Mars, Missions & Hardware, Press Release

New Research Points To Possible Seasonal Climate Patterns On Early Mars

by Keith CowingAugust 17, 2023August 17, 2023

New observations of mud cracks made by the Curiosity Rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments, indicating that the red planet may have once seen […]

Bacterial evolution through geological time. (a) The early evolution of bacterial genetic diversity in the Archaean (David and Alm 2010) is reflected by rapid increase in gene content disparity (see Supplementary Material). (b) A persistent higher diversification rate of aerobes since the GOE. The line charts the relative diversification rate (the ratio of the inverse of the waiting time to the next speciation event) for aerobic and anaerobic lineages, revealing a persistent higher diversification rate of aerobes for most of the Earth’s history since the GOE. Rates equilibrated prior to the NOE, before a return to higher diversification rates for aerobes since the GOE. The dotted line denotes a ratio of 1, where the diversification rate of aerobic and anaerobic lineages is equal. Terminal branches were omitted and ratios since 100 Mya were not calculated do to a low number of nodes. (c) Spread of aerobic metabolism by HGT. Transitions from anaerobic to aerobic lifestyles have outnumbered transitions in the reverse direction/back transitions/returns to anaerobicity for most of Earth history since the GOE. The plots show the ratio of aerobic to anaerobic transition rates on the dated species tree during each time period. The dotted line denotes a ratio of 1, where transitions occur in both directions at the same rate. The small number of nodes since ~200 Ma greatly increases uncertainty for both analyses, as reflected in the wide confidence intervals of posterior node age estimates. Ratios since 100 Mya were not calculated due to a low number of nodes. (d) shows the number of aerobic lineages according to Figure 2, e) qualitative sketch of atmospheric oxygen levels through time based on (Lyons, Reinhard, and Planavsky 2014; Poulton et al. 2021; Krause et al. 2022). The grey line shows the Moon-forming impact at ~4.52 Ga; the green line at ~3.23 Ga reflects the presence of fossil and isotopic evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis; the red line at ~2.33 Ga reflects the end of the GOE (see calibrations in Supplementary Material). --- biorxiv.org

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report

An Evolutionary Timescale For Bacteria Calibrated Using The Great Oxidation Event

by Keith CowingAugust 16, 2023August 16, 2023

Most of life’s diversity and history is microbial but it has left a meagre fossil record, greatly hindering understanding of evolution in deep time.

Phanerozoic biodiversity curves. (a) Total Phanerozoic diversity based on raw data82 divided into its three main Evolutionary Faunas (EF), i.e. the Cambrian trilobites, the Paleozoic brachiopods, and the modern gastropods. Tese are three distinct types of fauna whose diversity pattern expanded and contracted in a similar fashion throughout the diferent phases of the Phanerozoic. Each EF includes specifc taxonomic classes that were most abundant during (but not limited to) a certain period in Earth’s history. Furthermore, the EFs successively replaced one another as the principal group throughout the Phanerozoic. Te red arrows represent the Big Five mass extinction events, including the Ordovician–Silurian extinction (~445 Ma ago), Devonian extinction (~375 Ma ago), Permian–Triassic extinction (~250 Ma ago), Triassic-Jurassic extinction (~200 Ma ago) and the Cretaceous-tertiary extinction (~66 Ma ago)81. (b) Corrected biodiversity curve using the shareholder quorum subsampling (SQS) sample standardization method34. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Status Report

Variations In Climate Habitability Parameters And Their Effect On Earth’s Biosphere During The Phanerozoic Eon

by Keith CowingAugust 16, 2023August 16, 2023

Essential insights on the characterization and quality of a detectable biosphere are gained by analyzing the effects of its environmental parameters. We compiled environmental and biological properties of the Phanerozoic […]

The full posterior distributions (corner plots) of the Proterozoic Earth-like scenario with 1% of Modern Earth’s O2. The different cases explore a combination of different wavelength bands used for the retrieval process. The black lines in the corner plots refer to the true value used to simulate the data. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Reflected Spectroscopy Of Small Exoplanets III: Probing The UV Band To Measure Biosignature Gasses

by Keith CowingAugust 16, 2023August 16, 2023

Direct-imaging observations of terrestrial exoplanets will enable their atmospheric characterization and habitability assessment. Considering the Earth, the key atmospheric signatures for the biosphere is O2 and the photochemical product O3.

Brightness temperature spectra for the dayside hemisphere of selected modeled environments for TRAPPIST-1 c with JWST with points corresponding to the model spectra convolved to the F1500W filter band, over the full-wide half-max of the band’s wavelength extent (horizontal error bars). We also show the data point measured by Zieba et al. (2023), along with lines corresponding to blackbody temperatures for day-side with zero heat redistribution (dark grey dashed) and for a blackbody with perfect heat redistribution (light gray dashed). The best fit atmospheres are the 0.1 bar, O2-dominated atmospheres, at 0.5–1.0σ from the measured eclipse depth. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1

Potential Atmospheric Compositions of TRAPPIST-1 c constrained by JWST/MIRI Observations At 15 μm

by Keith CowingAugust 14, 2023August 14, 2023

The first JWST observations of TRAPPIST-1 c showed a secondary eclipse depth of 421+/-94 ppm at 15 um, which is consistent with a bare rock surface or a thin, O2-dominated, […]

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather

Tricorder Tech: Away Team Gas Detection With A Smartphone

Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). X. Detectability Of Currently Known Exoplanets And Synergies With Future IR/O/UV Reflected-starlight Imaging Missions

Identification Of The Top TESS Objects Of Interest For Atmospheric Characterization Of Transiting Exoplanets With JWST

A Mineralogical Reason Why All Exoplanets Cannot Be Equally Oxidising

New Research Points To Possible Seasonal Climate Patterns On Early Mars

An Evolutionary Timescale For Bacteria Calibrated Using The Great Oxidation Event

Variations In Climate Habitability Parameters And Their Effect On Earth’s Biosphere During The Phanerozoic Eon

Reflected Spectroscopy Of Small Exoplanets III: Probing The UV Band To Measure Biosignature Gasses

Potential Atmospheric Compositions of TRAPPIST-1 c constrained by JWST/MIRI Observations At 15 μm

Astrobiology Graduate Conference (AbGradCon26) Update

ExMODE: A Comprehensive Resource For Extremophile Genomic And Functional Exploration

Mass Wasting On Mars

The Hill Sphere Transits of Beta Pictoris c and The Search for Another 1981-like Event

Sample Return Tech: Pre-impact Meteorite Strewn Field Predictions For Imminent Impactors And Meteorite Recovery