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A Wandering Noon May Keep an Exoplanet's Water Moving
Climate simulations of near-synchronously rotating land planets find persistent polar ice but less severe water trapping than fixed-nightside models suggest.
Summary
Climate simulations of near-synchronously rotating land planets find persistent polar ice but less severe water trapping than fixed-nightside models suggest.
Planets close to M dwarfs are often modeled with one permanent dayside and one permanent nightside, where ice could lock away much of the water. In compact systems, neighboring planets can make the substellar point librate or circulate over millennia. Using TRAPPIST-1e as a test case, a three-dimensional climate model found a permanent polar reservoir, transient lower-latitude nightside ice that grows with longer synodic days and a persistent ice-free dayside region capable of supporting liquid water. Because ice accumulation may be slower than changes in spin regime, the simulated steady state may never fully form. Adding atmospheric lapse rate and isostatic adjustment to a synchronous model reduced predicted ice buildup by roughly a factor of three.
Why it matters
Climate simulations of near-synchronously rotating land planets find persistent polar ice but less severe water trapping than fixed-nightside models suggest.
Limits and context
No additional limitation was separately recorded.
Key claims
Climate simulations of near-synchronously rotating land planets find persistent polar ice but less severe water trapping than fixed-nightside models suggest.
Evidence: source-2026-10-27-015
Sources
- arXiv preprint 2610.33884, original v1arXiv · primary research
Corrections
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