Clouds in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. IV. On the scattering greenhouse effect of CO2 ice particles: Numerical radiative transfer studies

TL;DR

This study compares numerical methods for modeling CO2 ice cloud radiative effects on exoplanet atmospheres, revealing that simpler two-stream approaches overestimate the greenhouse effect compared to more accurate high-order methods.

Contribution

It demonstrates that high-order radiative transfer methods are essential for accurately assessing the scattering greenhouse effect of CO2 ice clouds on exoplanets.

Findings

Two-stream methods overestimate greenhouse effect by simplifying radiative transfer.

High-order methods show minimal greenhouse effect of CO2 ice clouds around M-type dwarfs.

Previous models likely overstate the warming impact of CO2 ice clouds.

Abstract

Owing to their wavelengths dependent absorption and scattering properties, clouds have a strong impact on the climate of planetary atmospheres. Especially, the potential greenhouse effect of CO2 ice clouds in the atmospheres of terrestrial extrasolar planets is of particular interest because it might influence the position and thus the extension of the outer boundary of the classic habitable zone around main sequence stars. We study the radiative effects of CO2 ice particles obtained by different numerical treatments to solve the radiative transfer equation. The comparison between the results of a high-order discrete ordinate method and simpler two-stream approaches reveals large deviations in terms of a potential scattering efficiency of the greenhouse effect. The two-stream methods overestimate the transmitted and reflected radiation, thereby yielding a higher scattering greenhouse effect. For the particular case of a cool M-type dwarf the CO2 ice particles show no strong effective scattering greenhouse effect by using the high-order discrete ordinate method, whereas a positive net greenhouse effect was found in case of the two-stream radiative transfer schemes. As a result, previous studies on the effects of CO2 ice clouds using two-stream approximations overrated the atmospheric warming caused by the scattering greenhouse effect. Consequently, the scattering greenhouse effect of CO2 ice particles seems to be less effective than previously estimated. In general, higher order radiative transfer methods are necessary to describe the effects of CO2 ice clouds accurately as indicated by our numerical radiative transfer studies.