Climate bistability of Earth-like exoplanets

Abstract

Before about 500 million years ago, most probably our planet experienced temporary snowball conditions, with continental and sea ices covering a large fraction of its surface. This points to a potential bistability of Earth's climate, that can have at least two different (statistical) equilibrium states for the same external forcing (i.e., solar radiation). Here we explore the probability of finding bistable climates in earth-like exoplanets, and consider the properties of planetary climates obtained by varying the semi-major orbital axis (thus, received stellar radiation), eccentricity and obliquity, and atmospheric pressure. To this goal, we use the Earth-like planet surface temperature model (ESTM), an extension of 1D Energy Balance Models developed to provide a numerically efficient climate estimator for parameter sensitivity studies and long climatic simulations. After verifying that the ESTM is able to reproduce Earth climate bistability, we identify the range of parameter space where climate bistability is detected. An intriguing result of the present work is that the planetary conditions that support climate bistability are remarkably similar to those required for the sustainance of complex, multicellular life on the planetary surface. The interpretation of this result deserves further investigation, given its relevance for the potential distribution of life in exoplanetary systems.

arXiv comment14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• EOS-ESTM: A flexible climate model for habitable exoplanets
• EOS: Atmospheric Radiative Transfer in Habitable Worlds with HELIOS
• Characteristics of aquatic biospheres on temperate planets around Sun-like stars and M-dwarfs
• Impact of vegetation albedo on the habitability of Earth-like exoplanets
• Interaction between vegetation and Snowball phases in the late Proterozoic Earth