[Earth and Planetary Science Letters] Whether Venus once had oceans and, if so, when it lost them are critical issues in the understanding of habitability on exoplanets, as well as […]
Greenhouse Effect
Posted inExtinction events
Researchers Confirm The Cause Of Earth’s Biggest Mass Extinction
[Stanford University] A new Stanford-led study offers the clearest picture yet of how some ocean life survived our planet’s biggest mass extinction while most animals did not.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Venus
Acidophilic Fungi As Possible Candidates For Living Forms In Venus’ Clouds
Present-day Venus, similar to Earth in terms of relative radius, acceleration of gravity and mean density, is characterised by a very strong greenhouse effect and full cloud cover.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Revisiting the Greenhouse Effect of Non-greenhouse Gases in the Atmospheres of Earth-like Planets
Although non-greenhouse gases can vary substantially in abundance in Earth-like atmospheres, their climatic influences remain insufficiently understood.
![Maps of GEOCLIM simulation (two time slices). “0” maps (left column) are the initial condition, “1” maps (right column) are at the perturbation peak (3 Myr of run time, cf Fig. 4a). (a0–1) Topography and oceanic O2 concentration at bottom of water column, (b0–1) physical erosion rate, showing enhanced physical erosion around the Variscan orogeny, and (c0– 1) regolith depletion quantified by the proportion of unweathered mineral at top of regolith. The uplifted area is contoured in magenta on each map. The boundaries of oceanic boxes, and their corresponding continental drainage basins are drawn on each map (white solid and blue dotted lines). GEOCLIM computes one mean O2 concentration for each of the 21 boxes. The maps panels (a0–1) show the mean concentrations of GEOCLIM bottom boxes drawn on the full geographic extent of these boxes at the oceanic resolution of the FOAM ocean-atmosphere general circulation model [90] simulations, which were used as GEOCLIM forcing. -- Science China Press](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/What-triggered-Earths.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Press Release
What Triggered Earth’s Shift From A Greenhouse To An Icehouse Climate And The Onset Of The Late Paleozoic Ice Age?
Scientists have debated for decades what caused the Late Paleozoic climate transition from a greenhouse to an icehouse state ~350 million years ago. Some invoke a pronounced increase in continental […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report
Proton Irradiation of Primitive Atmospheres of Young Exoplanets And Early Earth: N2O Greenhouse Warming And Prebiotic Synthesis
The emergence of habitable conditions on the early Earth and on rocky exoplanets requires persistent energy sources that can drive both prebiotic chemistry and climate warming under magnetically active young […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Status Report
Atmospheric Collapse And Habitability On Tidally-Locked Exoplanets
The habitability of terrestrial exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs is a key topic in the search for extraterrestrial life.
Posted inAnalog Studies, Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Press Release, Terraforming & Geoengineering, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Subglacial Weathering May Have Slowed Earth’s Escape From Snowball Earth
A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo challenges a long-standing assumption about Earth’s most extreme ice ages. Using numerical geochemical […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Press Release
How Earth’s Greenhouse Age Ended 66 Million Years Ago
A 66 million-year-old mystery behind how our planet transformed from a tropical greenhouse to the ice-capped world of today has been unravelled by scientists.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Astroclimes — Measuring The Abundance Of CO2 And CH4 In The Earth’s Atmosphere Uusing Astronomical Observations
Although a number of satellites and ground-based networks measure the total column volume mixing ratio (VMR) of these gases, they rely on sunlight, and column measurements at night are comparatively […]