High Relative Humidity of Water-Rich Atmospheres and Its Implications

Abstract:

The onset of the runaway greenhouse of water vapor is one of the important criteria defining the inner edge of the habitable zone, and has been extensively studied in one-dimensional (1D) radiative-convective models. One limitation of 1D simulations is the assumption of the fully saturated troposphere. In the real atmosphere, sub-saturated regions are created by the large-scale subsidence of air. These regions significantly delay the onset of the runaway greenhouse by playing the role of “radiator fins” that allow more infrared radiation escaping the planet. Here, we show that the degree of sub-saturation in the atmosphere strongly depends on the mass of background non-condensable component (e.g., N₂) in an idealized three-dimensional general circulation model (3D GCM). We specially develop the GCM to simulate the climate dynamics of water-rich atmospheres, based on the GFDL finite-volume dynamical core, a two-stream gray-radiation scheme and an energy-conserving convection scheme. Numerical simulation shows that the mid-troposphere becomes more saturated by reducing the background partial pressure from 10⁵ Pa to 500 Pa. The increase in relative humidity can be explained by the increase in static stability of the atmosphere when water vapor becomes dominated. In general, the mass of the background non-condensable components on potentially habitable planets could be regulated by many processes including the volcanic outgassing, stellar wind and impact erosion. These processes may also play an important role in determining the inner edge of the habitable zone besides the stellar spectral type and planetary rotation.