Special ClimaTea

Date: 

Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 12:00pm

Location: 

Virtual

Speaker: Professor Jun Yang from Peking University

Title: "Climates and Habitability of Tidally Locked Terrestrial Planets"

Abstract: Over 4000 exoplanets have been confirmed and most of them are orbiting around low-mass stars. Due to strong tidal forces, terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of low-mass stars are likely in synchronous rotation or spin-orbit resonance orbits. These planets differ from Earth in three major aspects: the slow rotation rate, the uneven distribution of stellar energy between the permanent day and night sides under synchronous rotation, and the redder stellar spectrum than the Sun. In this talk, I will introduce recent understanding on the climate and habitability of tidally locked planets, based on numerical simulations using a 2D cloud resovling model, 3D atmospheric general circulation models, and a 3D coupled atmosphere-ocean model. I will focus on clouds and their effect on the location of the inner edge of the habitable zone. Clouds on tidally locked terrestrial planets have a very strong cooling effect on the surface, which makes the inner edge be much closer to the host stars. I will also show high-resolution simulations of hurricane formation on tidally locked planets. Paper 1, Paper 2.