Atmospheric Dynamics of a Near Tidally Locked Earth-Size Planet

Abstract

The discovery and characterization of Earth-sized planets that are in, or near, a tidally-locked state are of crucial importance to understanding terrestrial planet evolution, and for which Venus is a clear analog. Exoplanetary science lies at the threshold of characterizing hundreds of terrestrial planetary atmospheres, thereby providing a statistical sample far greater than the limited inventory of terrestrial planetary atmospheres within the Solar System. However, the model-based approach for characterizing exoplanet atmospheres relies on Solar System data, resulting in our limited inventory being both foundational and critical atmospheric laboratories. Present terrestrial exoplanet demographics are heavily biased toward short-period planets, many of which are expected to be tidally locked, and also potentially runaway greenhouse candidates, similar to Venus. Here we describe the rise in the terrestrial exoplanet population and the study of tidal locking on climate simulations. These exoplanet studies are placed within the context of Venus, a local example of an Earth-sized, asynchronous rotator that is near the tidal locking limit. We describe the recent lessons learned regarding the dynamics of the Venusian atmosphere and how those lessons pertain to the evolution of our sibling planet. We discuss the implications of these lessons for exoplanet atmospheres, and outline the need for a full characterization of the Venusian climate in order to achieve a full and robust interpretation of terrestrial planetary atmospheres.

18 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy

References in corpus (38)

• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
• Most 1.6 Earth-Radius Planets are not Rocky
• Habitable Zones Around Main-Sequence Stars: Dependence on Planetary Mass
• Was Venus the First Habitable World of our Solar System?
• The habitability of Proxima Centauri b II. Possible climates and Observability
• Strong Dependence of the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone on Planetary Rotation Rate
• How to Characterize Habitable Worlds and Signs of Life
• Observing the Atmospheres of Known Temperate Earth-sized Planets with JWST
• The Detectability and Characterization of the TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanet Atmospheres with JWST
• Tidal Locking of Habitable Exoplanets
• Asynchronous rotation of Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of lower-mass stars
• The Occurrence of Rocky Habitable Zone Planets Around Solar-Like Stars from Kepler Data
• Venusian Habitable Climate Scenarios: Modeling Venus through time and applications to slowly rotating Venus-Like Exoplanets
• A Catalog of Kepler Habitable Zone Exoplanet Candidates
• The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report
• Day-night cloud asymmetry prevents early oceans on Venus but not on Earth
• Instrumentation for the detection and characterization of exoplanets
• Synthesizing Exoplanet Demographics from Radial Velocity and Microlensing Surveys, II: The Frequency of Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs
• The LUVOIR Mission Concept Study Final Report
• On the Frequency of Potential Venus Analogs from Kepler Data
• Venus as a Laboratory for Exoplanetary Science
• The rotational and divergent components of atmospheric circulation on tidally locked planets
• Water Trapping on Tidally Locked Terrestrial Planets Requires Special Conditions
• Comparison of the deep atmospheric dynamics of Jupiter and Saturn in light of the Juno and Cassini gravity measurements
• Architectures of Planetary Systems and Implications for their Formation
• Atmospheric convection plays a key role in the climate of tidally-locked terrestrial exoplanets: insights from high-resolution simulations
• Solar System Physics for Exoplanet Research
• Simulations of Water Vapor and Clouds on Rapidly Rotating and Tidally Locked Planets: a 3D Model Intercomparison
• The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) Technology Demonstration
• The Climates of Other Worlds: A Review of the Emerging Field of Exoplanet Climatology
• Observing Isotopologue Bands in Terrestrial Exoplanet Atmospheres with the James Webb Space Telescope---Implications for Identifying Past Atmospheric and Ocean Loss
• The Fundamental Connections Between the Solar System and Exoplanetary Science
• Predicting the Yield of Potential Venus Analogs from TESS and their Potential for Atmospheric Characterization
• A mirage of the cosmic shoreline: Venus-like clouds as a statistical false positive for exoplanet atmospheric erosion
• Stabilization of dayside surface liquid water via tropopause cold trapping on arid slowly rotating tidally locked planets
• Atmospheric stability and collapse on tidally locked rocky planets
• Toward Complete Characterization: Prospects for Directly Imaging Transiting Exoplanets
• The Impact of Planetary Rotation Rate on the Reflectance and Thermal Emission Spectrum of Terrestrial Exoplanets Around Sun-like Stars

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Super-Earths and Earth-like Exoplanets
• Water Condensation Zones around Main Sequence Stars
• Eta-Earth Revisited II: Deriving a Maximum Number of Earth-like Habitats in the Galactic Disk
• Role of Planetary Radius on Atmospheric Escape of Rocky Exoplanets
• On the behaviour of spin-orbit connection of exoplanets
• The climates and thermal emission spectra of prime nearby temperate rocky exoplanet targets