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Exoclimes_Conference_booklet1

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pressure.The Bcool project is an international collaboration studying the<br />

magnetic fields of solar-type stars and whose results can be used for<br />

stellar wind studies. Using a simple wind model we show that an exoplanet<br />

like the present-day Earth would generally need to orbit outside the<br />

traditional habitable temperature zone of many solar-type stars to<br />

maintain the size of its magnetosphere. However, planets orbiting within<br />

the classical temperature habitable zone of solar-type stars should<br />

possess magnetospheres that although compressed, are likely to protect the<br />

planet's atmosphere and hence allow for the planet to be habitable.<br />

An aqua planet under strong solar forcing!<br />

Max Popp — Max Planck Institute for Meteorology<br />

A modified version of the general circulation model ECHAM6 is used to investigate the<br />

impact of increased total solar irradiance (TSI) on an aqua planet on a present-day Earthlike<br />

orbit. We find that the present-day Earth-like climate destabilizes for a TSI between<br />

1.06 and 1.08 times the present-day Earth value (S0). The aqua planet does not, however,<br />

go into a Runaway Greenhouse, but attains a new steady state with global-mean seasurface<br />

temperatures exceeding 335 K. This warm state is characterized by a low<br />

meridional temperature gradient, a weak meridional circulation without polar cells, a moist<br />

stratosphere and convection-dominated cloud formation. As the TSI is further increased,<br />

the planet remains in the same regime of warm steady states for TSIs of at least up to 1.2<br />

S0, because the cloud albedo increases as well, and balances the increased forcing. In<br />

these states, the volume mixing ratio of water vapor in the upper atmosphere may attain<br />

values as large as 0.015. This large mixing ratio exceeds the “Moist Greenhouse” limit<br />

(Kasting et al. 1993) and suggests that a planet in such a warm state would hence be<br />

subject to a rapid loss of water.<br />

Climate dynamics of a coupled Aquaplanet<br />

Josiane Salameh — Max Planck institute for Meteorology<br />

The idea behind an Aquaplanet, an idealized configuration of the current Earth with all the<br />

landmasses removed, is not recent. However, most of the research is conducted with<br />

stand-alone atmospheric models. Thus, the originality behind considering the coupled<br />

Aquaplanet setup, highlights the ocean's impact and allows us to directly interpret the<br />

fundamental processes and feedbacks between ocean and atmosphere without any land<br />

interference.<br />

As for the few coupled Aquaplanet studies lately conducted on General Circulation<br />

Models (GCM), they showed an extreme disparity regarding the final climate state. The<br />

range of states discovered lies between a warm climate qualified with a lack of sea-ice<br />

formation and a cold climate where sea-ice extend at the poles. Then, the existence of<br />

three equilibrium states was verified while integrating the same GCM from different<br />

random initial conditions.<br />

The climate of a coupled Aquaplanet remains an open question. Therefore, our task is to<br />

analyze the atmospheric-oceanic circulations of a coupled Aquaplanet while contributing to<br />

this discrepancy in previous results. The simulations are executed on “ICON”, based on an<br />

icosahedral triangular grid. Effects of rotation on Hadley cell's magnitude and extent, winds<br />

distribution and others were already theoretically discussed and numerically tested. In<br />

order to achieve a higher physical understanding of the Earth rotation rate and its effect on<br />

28

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