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Stable climates for temperate rocky circumbinary planets
  • Thaddeus Komacek
Thaddeus Komacek
The University of Chicago

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Abstract

Circumbinary planets may comprise a significant fraction of the temperate rocky planets in our galaxy. A wide range of previous work has explored the climate of circumbinary planets with one-dimensional energy balance models, but studies utilizing three-dimensional general circulation models (GCMs) have only explored gaseous or ocean-covered planets. Recent GCM results from Wolf et al. (2020) determine the impact of the time-varying stellar forcing on the climate of Earth-like circumbinary planets in a broad range of twelve modeled systems with stellar spectral types from G2 to M0. The planets modeled are assumed to have the same continental and oceanic configuration as Earth and receive the same time-averaged stellar instellation as Earth. In all cases the climate variability has a low amplitude, with local maximum temperatures never exceeding the wet bulb threshold for human life. As a result, Earth-like life could persist on circumbinary planets that undergo large-amplitude orbital variations in instellation, and such planets remain viable targets to search for biosignatures and other key habitability indicators.
Nov 2020Published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets volume 125 issue 11. 10.1029/2020JE006712