Abstract
As above, so below. Although the fervor of research builds over the impact of the geosphere on planetary habitability, considerably more research is going into understanding how planetary atmospheres may influence the same property. This chapter expands upon, improves the accuracy of, and produces viable models of atmospheres for planets with different orbital distances from red dwarf stars.
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- 1.
\( {P}_{years}=\left[{\left(\frac{\frac{L_{\ast }}{L_{sun}}}{\frac{F_p}{F_{Earth}}}\right)}^{3/4}\right]{\left(\frac{M_{\ast }}{M_{sun}}\right)}^{-1/2} \) Here, orbital period of any planet orbiting at the inner edge of the habitable zone is proportional to the mass of the star M∗, its luminosity L∗ and F∗ is the stellar flux on the planet. These are related to the mass and luminosity of the Sun and stellar flux received on Earth.
- 2.
If you want to calculate this value, take a value “N”—the Brunt–Väisälä frequency (the atmosphere’s propensity to oscillate in the planet’s gravitational field); multiply it by the scale height (which can be simplified to the troposphere depth for terrestrial planets—but it’s the depth over which the density decrease by the factor “e”) and divide it by the Coriolis parameter, f0; pi and another factor n, which is dimensionless: i.e., \( L=\frac{NH}{f_0\pi n} \). In turn the Coriolis parameter, f0, is set by the planetary radius and its rotation rate (twice the rate, divided by the sine of the latitude,φ: f0 = 2Ωsinφ). (OK, the concept is a little tricky but the math is straightforward…)
- 3.
There is more on this phenomenon in Chapter 10 of the author’s book entitled The Exo-Weather Report (Springer).
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Stevenson, D.S. (2019). Atmospheric Circulation and Climate. In: Red Dwarfs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25550-3_5
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