Planetary Climate Dynamics

Abstract:

The “cosmic shoreline,” a semi-empirical relation that separates airless worlds from worlds with atmospheres as proposed by K. J. Zahnle & D. C. Catling, is now guiding large-scale JWST surveys aimed at detecting rocky exoplanet atmospheres. We expand upon this framework by revisiting the shoreline using existing hydrodynamic escape models applied to Earth-like, Venus-like, and steam atmospheres for rocky exoplanets, and we estimate energy-limited escape rates for CH4 atmospheres. We determine the critical instellation required for atmospheric retention by calculating time-integrated atmospheric mass loss. Our analysis introduces a new metric for target selection in the Rocky Worlds Director’s Discretionary Time and refines expectations for rocky planet atmosphere searches. Exploring initial volatile inventory ranging from 0.01% to 1% of planetary mass, we find that its variation prevents the definition of a unique clear-cut shoreline, though nonlinear escape physics can reduce this sensitivity to initial conditions. Additionally, uncertain distributions of high-energy stellar evolution and planet age further blur the critical instellations for atmospheric retention, yielding broad shorelines. Hydrodynamic escape models find atmospheric retention is markedly more favorable for higher-mass planets orbiting higher-mass stars, with carbon-rich atmospheres remaining plausible for 55 Cancri e despite its extreme instellation. We caution that our estimates are sensitive to processes with poorly understood dynamics, such as atomic line cooling. Finally, we illustrate how density measurements can be used to statistically test the existence of the cosmic shorelines, emphasizing the need for more precise mass and radius measurements.

Abstract:

JWST’s unprecedented sensitivity enables precise spectrophotometric monitoring of substellar worlds, revealing atmospheric variability driven by mechanisms operating across different pressure levels. This same precision now permits exceptionally sensitive searches for transiting exosatellites—small terrestrial companions to these worlds. Using a novel simultaneous dual-band search method to address host variability, we present a search for transiting exosatellites in an 8 hr JWST/MIRI LRS light curve of the nearby (2.0 pc) substellar binary WISE J1049–5319 AB, composed of two ∼30 MJup brown dwarfs separated by 3.5 au and viewed nearly edge-on. Although we detect no statistically significant transits, our injection/recovery tests demonstrate sensitivity to satellites as small as 0.275 R⊕ (0.96 RIo or ∼1 lunar radius), corresponding to 300 ppm transit depths, and satellite-to-host mass ratios >10⁻⁶. This approach paves the way for detecting Galilean moon analogs around directly imaged brown dwarfs, free-floating planets, and wide-orbit exoplanets, dozens of which are already scheduled for JWST light-curve monitoring. In our solar system, each giant planet hosts on average 3.5 moons above this threshold, suggesting that JWST now probes a regime where such companions are expected to be abundant. The technique and sensitivities demonstrated here mark a critical step toward detecting exosatellites and ultimately enabling constraints on the occurrence rates of small terrestrial worlds orbiting 1–70 MJup hosts.

Abstract:

SIMP-0136 is a T2.5 brown dwarf whose young age (200 ± 50 Myr) and low mass (15 ± 3 MJup) make it an ideal analogue for the directly imaged exoplanet population. With a 2.4 hour period, it is known to be variable in both the infrared (IR) and the radio, which has been attributed to changes in the cloud coverage and the presence of an aurora, respectively. To quantify the changes in the atmospheric state that drive this variability, we obtained time-series spectra of SIMP-0136 covering one full rotation with both NIRSpec/PRISM and the MIRI/LRS on board JWST. We performed a series of time-resolved atmospheric retrievals using petitRADTRANS to measure changes in the temperature structure, chemistry, and cloudiness. We inferred the presence of a ~250 K thermal inversion above 10 mbar of SIMP-0136 at all phases and we propose that this inversion is due to the deposition of energy into the upper atmosphere by an aurora. Statistical tests were performed to determine which parameters were driving the observed spectroscopic variability. The primary contribution was due to changes in the temperature profile at pressures deeper than 10 mbar, which resulted in variation of the effective temperature from 1243 K to 1248 K. This changing effective temperature was also correlated to observed changes in the abundances of CO2 and H2S, while all other chemical species were consistent with being homogeneous throughout the atmosphere. Patchy silicate clouds were required to fit the observed spectra, but the cloud properties were not found to systematically vary with longitude. This work paints a portrait of an L-T transition object, where the primary variability mechanisms are magnetic and thermodynamic in nature, rather than due to inhomogeneous cloud coverage.

Abstract:

Abstract:

Rocky exoplanets accessible to characterization often lie on close-in orbits where tidal heating within their interiors is significant, with the L 98-59 planetary system being a prime example. As a long-term energy source for ongoing mantle melting and outgassing, tidal heating has been considered as a way to replenish lost atmospheres on rocky planets around active M-dwarfs. We simulate the early evolution of L 98-59 b, c, and d using a time-evolved interior-atmosphere modelling framework, with a self-consistent implementation of tidal heating and redox-controlled outgassing. Emerging from our calculations is a novel self-limiting mechanism between radiative cooling, tidal heating, and mantle rheology, which we term the ‘radiation-tide-rheology feedback’. Our coupled modelling yields self-limiting tidal heating estimates that are up to two orders of magnitude lower than previous calculations, and yet are still large enough to enable the extension of primordial magma oceans to Gyr time-scales. Comparisons with a semi-analytic model demonstrate that this negative feedback is a robust mechanism which can probe a given planet’s initial conditions, atmospheric composition, and interior structure. The orbit and instellation of the sub-Venus L 98-59 b likely place it in a regime where tidal heating has kept the planet molten up to the present day, even if it were to have lost its atmosphere. For c and d, a long-lived magma ocean can be induced by tides only with additional atmospheric regulation of energy transport.