Planets smaller than Neptune and larger than Earth make up the majority of the discovered exoplanets. Those with H2-rich atmospheres are prime targets for atmospheric characterization. The transition between the […]
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
Episodic Deluges In Simulated Hothouse Climates
Earth’s distant past and potentially its future include extremely warm “hothouse” climate states, but little is known about how the atmosphere behaves in such states. One distinguishing characteristic of hothouse […]
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release
Physically-motivated Basis Functions For Temperature Maps Of Exoplanets
Thermal phase curves of exoplanet atmospheres have revealed temperature maps as a function of planetary longitude, often by sinusoidal decomposition of the phase curve.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
Ocean Life Helps Produce Clouds, But Existing Clouds Keep New Ones At Bay
Stand on the ocean’s shore and take a big whiff of the salt spray and you’ll smell the unmistakably pungent scent of the sea. That ripe, almost rotting smell? That’s […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
Volcanoes Acted As A Safety Valve For Earth's Long-term Climate
Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that extensive chains of volcanoes have been responsible for both emitting and then removing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) over geological time. This […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
Researchers Find Oxygen Spike Coincided With Ancient Global Extinction
Two hundred fifty-two million years ago, much of life on planet Earth was dying. In an event that marked the end of the Permian period, more than 96 percent of […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Slowdown In Earth's Rotation Could Have Affected The Oxygen Content Of Its Atmosphere
Virtually all oxygen on Earth was and is produced by photosynthesis, which was invented by tiny organisms, the cyanobacteria, when our planet was still a rather uninhabitable place.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
A Decline In CO2 Cooled Earth's Climate Over 30 Million Years Ago
New research led by the University of Bristol demonstrates that a decline in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 played a major role in driving Earth’s climate from a warm greenhouse […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
Beyond Runaway: Initiation Of The Post-runaway Greenhouse State On Rocky Exoplanets
The runaway greenhouse represents the ultimate climate catastrophe for rocky, Earth-like worlds: when the incoming stellar flux cannot be balanced by radiation to space, the oceans evaporate and exacerbate heating, […]
![Radius of observed planetesimal belts as a function of host star luminosity (black and white points with error bars). The white shaded region represents the ±1σ range of power laws (about the best fit) allowed by the data, including the intrinsic scatter as well as the uncertainty in the observed radii. The background colour map represents the selection probability (%), or percentage of belts that would pass the selection effects at a given [R-L⋆] location, assuming unobserved belts have the same distribution of parameters [d,RBB/R, M, λ0, β] as the observed population. -- astro-ph.EP](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/REsolved-ALMA-and-SMA-Observations.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
Arrival Of Land Plants Changed Earth's Climate Control System
The arrival of plants on land about 400 million years ago may have changed the way the Earth naturally regulates its own climate, according to a new study led by […]