The Inhomogeneity Effect II: Rotational and Orbital States Impact Planetary Cooling

TL;DR

This paper extends the inhomogeneity effect theory to analyze how rotational and orbital parameters influence planetary cooling, revealing significant impacts on internal heat flux distribution and planetary evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized inhomogeneity metric and demonstrates how planetary rotation and orbit affect cooling and internal heat flux variability.

Findings

Surface temperature increases with rotation rate and thermal inertia.

Internal heat flux varies spatially, especially on tidally locked planets.

Cooling flux is affected by obliquity, eccentricity, and radiative timescale.

Abstract

We generalize the theory of the inhomogeneity effect to enable comparison among different inhomogeneous planets. A metric of inhomogeneity based on the cumulative distribution function is applied to investigate the dependence of planetary cooling on previously overlooked parameters. The mean surface temperature of airless planets increases with rotational rate and surface thermal inertia, which bounds the value in the tidally locked configuration and the equilibrium temperature. Using an analytical model, we demonstrate that the internal heat flux of giant planets exhibits significant spatial variability, primarily emitted from the nightside and high-latitude regions acting as ``radiator fins." Given a horizontally uniform interior temperature in the convective zone, the outgoing internal flux increases up to several folds as the inhomogeneity of the incoming stellar flux increases. The enhancement decreases with increasing heat redistribution through planetary dynamics or rotation. The outgoing internal flux on rapidly rotating planets generally increases with planetary obliquity and orbital eccentricity. The radiative timescale and true anomaly of the vernal equinox also play significant roles. If the radiative timescale is long, the outgoing internal flux shows a slightly decreasing but nonlinear trend with obliquity. Our findings indicate that rotational and orbital states greatly influence the cooling of planets and impact the interior evolution of giant planets, particularly for tidally locked planets and planets with high eccentricity and obliquity (such as Uranus), as well as the spatial and temporal variations of their cooling fluxes.