Yuwei Wang1, Feng Tian2, and Yongyun Hu1
1Laboratory for Climate and Ocean-Atmosphere Sciences, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871 China; yyhu@pku.edu.cn
2Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract
Previous studies show that synchronous rotating habitable exoplanets around M dwarfs should have an “eyeball” climate pattern—a limited region of open water on the day side and ice on the rest of the planet. However, exoplanets with nonzero eccentricities could have spin–orbit resonance states different from the synchronous rotation state. Here, we show that a striped-ball climate pattern, with a global belt of open water at low and middle latitudes and ice over both polar regions, should be common on habitable exoplanets in eccentric orbits around M dwarfs. We further show that these different climate patterns can be observed by future exoplanet detection missions.
Citation: Wang, Y., F. Tian, and Y. Hu, 2014: Climate patterns of habitable exoplanets in eccentric orbits around M dwarfs. ApJ Lett., 791: L12, doi:10.1088/2041-8205/791/1/L12
