Energy balance climate models

North, Gerald R.; Cahalan, Robert F.; Coakley, James A.

doi:10.1029/rg019i001p00091

Cited by 530 publications

(366 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…The present work's model has a slight modification, described in Section 2.2, to handle starting in a snowball state. Our model treats the redistribution of heat as a diffusive process, and it (or close variants) has been used by other authors both in the context of exoplanet habitability (Williams & Kasting 1997, hereafter WK97) and in other contexts, including studies of both Martian climate (Nakamura & Tajika 2002) and Earth's climate (North et al 1981). 12 The response of this model to nonzero eccentricity is explored extensively in a companion paper (D10).…”

Section: Climate Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…13 Lorenz (1979) justified the diffusive approximation for studies of large-scale climatic trends; this treatment has been used in many EBMs in the geophysical literature in the last several decades (e.g., Suarez & Held 1979;North et al 1981North et al , 1983. Furthermore, Showman et al (2009) provide an illuminating discussion of the applicability of the diffusive approximation.…”

Section: Dimensional Analysis Of Ebmmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Generalized Milankovitch Cycles and Long-Term Climatic Habitability

Spiegel

Raymond

Dressing

et al. 2010

ApJ

122

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Although Earth's orbit is never far from circular, terrestrial planets around other stars might experience substantial changes in eccentricity. Eccentricity variations could lead to climate changes, including possible "phase transitions" such as the snowball transition (or its opposite). There is evidence that Earth has gone through at least one globally frozen, "snowball" state in the last billion years, which it is thought to have exited after several million years because global ice-cover shut off the carbonate-silicate cycle, thereby allowing greenhouse gases to build up to sufficient concentration to melt the ice. Due to the positive feedback caused by the high albedo of snow and ice, susceptibility to falling into snowball states might be a generic feature of water-rich planets with the capacity to host life. This paper has two main thrusts. First, we revisit one-dimensional energy balance climate models as tools for probing possible climates of exoplanets, investigate the dimensional scaling of such models, and introduce a simple algorithm to treat the melting of the ice layer on a globally frozen planet. We show that if a terrestrial planet undergoes Milankovitch-like oscillations of eccentricity that are of great enough magnitude, it could melt out of a snowball state. Second, we examine the kinds of variations of eccentricity that a terrestrial planet might experience due to the gravitational influence of a giant companion. We show that a giant planet on a sufficiently eccentric orbit can excite extreme eccentricity oscillations in the orbit of a habitable terrestrial planet. More generally, these two results demonstrate that the long-term habitability (and astronomical observables) of a terrestrial planet can depend on the detailed architecture of the planetary system in which it resides.

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Section: Climate Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dimensional Analysis Of Ebmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized Milankovitch Cycles and Long-Term Climatic Habitability

Spiegel

Raymond

Dressing

et al. 2010

ApJ

122

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“…A dynamically constrained two-box model for atmospheric heat transport can be created as follows (North et al 1981). Assuming for simplicity that the sun is always in the equatorial plane (i.e.…”

Section: A Two-box Model Including Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

MEP and planetary climates: insights from a two-box climate model containing atmospheric dynamics

Jupp

Cox

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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A two-box model for equator-to-pole planetary heat transport is extended to include simple atmospheric dynamics. The surface drag coefficient C D is treated as a free parameter and solutions are calculated analytically in terms of the dimensionless planetary parameters h (atmospheric thickness), v (rotation rate) and j (advective capability). Solutions corresponding to maximum entropy production (MEP) are compared with solutions previously obtained from dynamically unconstrained two-box models. As long as the advective capability j is sufficiently large, dynamically constrained MEP solutions are identical to dynamically unconstrained MEP solutions. Consequently, the addition of a dynamical constraint does not alter the previously obtained MEP results for Earth, Mars and Titan, and an analogous result is presented here for Venus. The rate of entropy production in an MEP state is shown to be independent of rotation rate if the advective capability j is sufficiently large (as for the four examples in the solar system), or if the rotation rate v is sufficiently small. The model indicates, however, that the dynamical constraint does influence the MEP state when j is small, which might be the case for some extrasolar planets. Finally, results from the model developed here are compared with previous numerical simulations in which the effect of varying surface drag coefficient on entropy production was calculated.

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“…We use a one-dimensional energy balance climate model (e.g., North et al 1981;Williams & Kasting 1997):…”

Section: Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate of Eccentric Terrestrial Planets with Carbonate-Silicate Geochemical Cycle

2012

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Abstract. Recent discovery of extrasolar planets indicates that some of them have much higher eccentricity than the planets in the solar system. Here, we investigate the climate of such eccentric terrestrial planets with oceans and carbonate-silicate geochemical cycles. We find that the climate of the planets are dependent on the annual mean insolation as shown in previous works. We also find that the planets orbiting slightly further from our Sun than the Earth are globally ice-covered even if the carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle works under the same CO 2 degassing rate as on the present Earth. However, when the CO2 degassing rate is higher, the planets avoid being globally ice-covered owing to the high level.

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Energy balance climate models

Cited by 530 publications

References 99 publications

Generalized Milankovitch Cycles and Long-Term Climatic Habitability

Generalized Milankovitch Cycles and Long-Term Climatic Habitability

MEP and planetary climates: insights from a two-box climate model containing atmospheric dynamics

Climate of Eccentric Terrestrial Planets with Carbonate-Silicate Geochemical Cycle

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