The recent discoveries of terrestrial exoplanets and super-Earths extending over a broad range of orbital and physical parameters suggest that these planets will span a wide range of climatic regimes. Characterization of the atmospheres of warm super-Earths has already begun and will be extended to smaller and more distant planets over the coming decade. The habitability of these worlds may be strongly affected by their three-dimensional atmospheric circulation regimes, since the global climate feedbacks that control the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone—including transitions to Snowball-like states and runaway-greenhouse feedbacks—depend on the equator-to-pole temperature differences, patterns of relative humidity, and other aspects of the dynamics. We use general circulation models in order to study the range of possible climates and how the climate depends on parameters such as rotation rate, orbital period, distance to parent star, obliquity, atmospheric mass, gravitational acceleration, radius, opacity etc.
Select publications:
- Atmospheric dynamics of terrestrial planets over a wide range of orbital and atmospheric parameters, Kaspi, Y. amd Showman, A., 2015, ApJ
- Dynamics of massive atmospheres, Chemke, R. and Kaspi, Y., 2017, ApJ
- An Axisymmetric Limit for the Width of the Hadley Cell on Planets With Large Obliquity and Long Seasonality, Guendelman, I. and Kaspi, Y., 2018, GRL
- Atmospheric dynamics on terrestrial planets: the seasonal response to changes in orbital, rotational and radiative timescales, Guendelman, I. and Kaspi, Y., 2019, ApJ
-
Atmospheric dynamics on terrestrial planets with eccentric orbits, Guendelman I. and Kaspi Y., 2020, ApJ