Global or Local Pure-Condensible Atmospheres: Importance of Horizontal Latent Heat Transport

TL;DR

This paper investigates the distribution and behavior of pure condensible atmospheres on planets, emphasizing the role of horizontal latent heat transport in maintaining global or localized atmospheres across different planetary regimes.

Contribution

It introduces a non-dimensional parameter that predicts whether a pure condensible atmosphere is global or localized, highlighting the importance of horizontal latent heat transport.

Findings

Global atmospheres are maintained by strong horizontal latent heat transport.

Surface temperature variation can be estimated using the non-dimensional parameter.

Thick atmospheres can keep surfaces nearly isothermal even near freezing points.

Abstract

The distribution of a pure condensible planetary atmosphere in equilibrium with a surface reservoir is revisited employing the energy budget of the climate system, emphasizing the atmospheric horizontal latent heat transport. This configuration is applicable to icy Solar System bodies such as Triton as well as a range of possible exoplanet atmospheres, including water or $\mathrm{CO_2}$ iceballs or ocean worlds, and lava planets with mineral vapor atmospheres. Climate regimes for slowly rotating planets with the hot-spot near the substellar point, and for rapidly rotating planets with a warm equatorial belt, are both treated. A non-dimensional parameter controlling the fractional variation of the surface pressure is derived; it measures whether the pure condensible atmosphere is global or localized. The global pure condensible atmosphere with the non-dimensional parameter much less than order of unity is maintained by the strong horizontal latent heat transport associated with an "evaporation/sublimation-driven flow" from warm to cold places that compensates for the incoming differential radiative forcing. We show that the variation of surface temperature can be estimated in terms of this non-dimensional parameter if it is not too large. In the case of a pure water-vapor atmosphere with an ice or liquid surface, we show that the atmosphere is thick enough to maintain nearly isothermal surface conditions even when the substellar surface temperature is around the freezing point. Finally, it is proposed that the evaporation/sublimation-driven flow regime for global atmospheres could be detected via its effect on the inhomogeneous distribution of minor non-condensible components in the atmosphere.