Effects of Transient Stellar Emissions On Planetary Climates Of Tidally-locked Exo-earths

Space weather events in planetary environments sourced from transient host star emissions, including stellar flares, coronal mass ejections, and stellar proton events, can substantially influence an exoplanet’s climate and atmospheric evolution history.

These time-dependent events may also affect our ability to measure and interpret its properties by modulating reservoirs of key chemical compounds and changing the atmosphere’s brightness temperature. The majority of previous work focusing on photochemical effects used single-column models.

Here, using three-dimensional (3D) general circulation models with interactive photochemistry, we simulate the climate and chemical impacts of stellar flare-sourced energetic particle precipitation.

We examine their effects on synchronously rotating TRAPPIST-1e-like planets on a range of spatiotemporal scales. We find that sudden thermospheric cooling is associated with radiative cooling of NO and CO₂, and middle-to-lower atmospheric warming is associated with transient increases in infrared absorbers such as N₂O and H₂O. In certain regimes, these temperature changes are strongly affected by O₃ variability depending on the flare’s spectral shape and energy.

However, the role of O₃ in temperature change is reduced in the most extreme flaring scenarios explored in our simulations. In addition to effects on planetary climate and atmospheric chemistry, we also find that intense flares can energize the middle atmosphere, causing enhancements in wind velocities up to 40 m s⁻¹ in sub-stellar night-sides between 30 and 50 km in altitude.

Our results suggest that successive, energetic eruptive events from younger stars may be pivotal factors in determining the atmosphere dynamics of their planets.

Howard Chen, Paolo De Luca, Assaf Hochman, Thaddeus D. Komacek

Comments: 11 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in the AAS Journals
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2505.03723 [astro-ph.EP](or arXiv:2505.03723v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.03723
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Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/add33e
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Submission history
From: Howard Chen
[v1] Tue, 6 May 2025 17:51:42 UTC (4,480 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03723
Astrobiology