Thermal Phases of Earth-Like Planets: Estimating Thermal Inertia from Eccentricity, Obliquity, and Diurnal Forcing

TL;DR

This study uses climate modeling to analyze how Earth's thermal properties, such as thermal inertia and heat transport, influence observable thermal phase variations, aiding the characterization of Earth-like exoplanets.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate planetary thermal inertia from thermal lightcurves, accounting for effects of obliquity, eccentricity, and heat transport, enhancing exoplanet climate understanding.

Findings

Temperate planets have three times the heat capacity of snowball planets.

Cross-equatorial heat transport reduces seasonal amplitude without phase lag.

Thermal inertia effects are masked by regional variations in surface properties.

Abstract

In order to understand the climate on terrestrial planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars, one would like to know their thermal inertia. We use a global climate model to simulate the thermal phase variations of Earth-analogs and test whether these data could distinguish between planets with different heat storage and heat transport characteristics. In particular, we consider a temperate climate with polar ice caps (like modern Earth), and a snowball state where the oceans are globally covered in ice. We first quantitatively study the periodic radiative forcing from, and climatic response to, rotation, obliquity, and eccentricity. Orbital eccentricity and seasonal changes in albedo cause variations in the global-mean absorbed flux. The responses of the two climates to these global seasons indicate that the temperate planet has 3 times the bulk heat capacity of the snowball planet due to the presence of liquid water oceans. The temperate obliquity seasons are weaker than one would expect based on thermal inertia alone; this is due to cross-equatorial oceanic and atmospheric energy transport. Thermal inertia and cross-equatorial heat transport have qualitatively different effects on obliquity seasons, insofar as heat transport tends to reduce seasonal amplitude without inducing a phase lag. For an Earth-like planet, however, this effect is masked by the mixing of signals from low thermal inertia regions (sea ice and land) with that from high thermal inertia regions (oceans), which also produces a damped response with small phase lag. We then simulate thermal lightcurves as they would appear to a high-contrast imaging mission (TPF-I/Darwin) and consider the inverse problem of estimating thermal inertia based solely on time-resolved photometry. [Abridged]