Habitable Planets with High Obliquities

Details Habitable Planets with High Obliquities Habitable Planets with High Obliquities

Mar 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996lpi....27.1437w&link_type=abstract

Lunar and Planetary Science, volume 27, page 1437

Biology

1

Atmospheres, Climate, Exobiology, Obliquity, Zones: Habitable

Scientific paper

The obliquities of the terrestrial planets have been shown to vary chaotically and by large amounts in times less than 10 Myr, thus inviting the possibility for Earth to occasionally reach high obliquity where it might experience climatic conditions unfavorable for life. Although Earth escapes this fate by having its rotation axis stabilized by the Moon, many extrasolar Earth-like planets without large satellites should be subjected to periods of high obliquity. The number of worlds supporting life outside the Solar System, then, may be far fewer than has been suggested if high obliquities render moon-less Earths uninhabitable. Climates at high obliquity are particularly harsh on middle and high latitude continents that warm and cool rapidly in response to large insolation swings. These areas exhibit a wide range of temperatures over a seasonal cycle, with extremes reaching well above or below 273 Kelvin, making them seasonally unsuitable for water-dependent life. We demonstrate here that Earth-like planets will have their temperature extremes mitigated at high obliquity if they possess dense CO2 atmospheres, as is likely for many planets situated in the outer habitable zone (HZ) of a Sun-like star. The climate stabilizing mechanism governing atmospheric CO2 on Earth-like planets is carbonate-silicate weathering. Planets with atmospheres rich in CO2 demonstrate small latitudinal temperature gradients and seasonal temperature cycles, and thus remain habitable at high obliquities.

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