One day, mankind may set foot on another habitable planet. This planet may look very different from Earth but one thing will feel familiar – rain.
This Recent paper, Harvard researchers have found that rainfall on different planetary environments, even on planets, is more intense in different places than on Earth and Jupiter. Understanding the behavior of rainfall on other planets is important not only for revealing the ancient climate on planets like Mars, but also for identifying potential habitable planets outside our solar system.
“Thinking about the Earth’s habitat,” says Caitlin Loftus, a graduate student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and lead author of the paper, “The life cycle of clouds is really important.” But clouds and rain are really complex and complex that are perfectly modeled. We are looking for simple ways to understand how clouds evolve, and the first step is to have cloud droplets evaporate into the atmosphere or turn toward the surface like rain. “
“Light precipitation is an important component of the rain cycle for all planets,” he said Robin Wordsworth, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (Sea) and senior author of the paper “If we understand how individual precipitation behaves, we can better represent precipitation in complex climate models.”
An essential aspect of precipitation behavior, at least for climate modelers, is that precipitation turns the planet’s surface because atmospheric water plays an important role in the planet’s climate. Size is important for that goal. Liquid water called WASP-76bB, methane or superheat is explained, the liquid iron will be too high and the droplet will break apart individually due to insufficient pressure on the surface. Very small and the stem will evaporate before hitting the surface.
Loftus and Wordsworth have identified a Goldilocks region for the size of precipitation using only three properties: drop size, erosion speed and evaporation speed.
