Reports on Climates

Possible climates on terrestrial exoplanets.

What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance, to optimize future telescopic observations or to assess the probability of habitable worlds. To begin with, climate primarily depends on (i) the atmospheric composition and the volatile inventory; ...

Solar Influence on Global and Regional Climates

The literature relevant to how solar variability influences climate is vast—but much has been based on inadequate statistics and non-robust procedures. The common pitfalls are outlined in this review. The best estimates of the solar influence on the global mean air surface temperature show relatively small effects, compared with the response to anthropogenic changes (and broadly in line with th...

Habitable Climates

The Earth is only partially habitable according to the standard liquid-water definition. We reconsider planetary habitability in the framework of energybalance models, the simplest seasonal models in physical climatology, to assess the spatial and temporal habitability of Earth-like planets. In order to quantify the degree of climatic habitability of our models, we define several metrics of fra...

Extreme climates

Effect of land albedo, CO2, orography, and oceanic heat transport on extreme climates V. Romanova, G. Lohmann, and K. Grosfeld Department of Physics, University of Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee, 33040 Bremen, Germany Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, 27515 Bremerhaven, Germany Received: 11 October 2005 – Accepted: 22 November 2005 – Published: 7 December 2005 Correspondence to: ...

“icehouse” (cold) Climates