The Complete Evaporation Limit of Land Planets

Abstract

Planets with very little amount of water on their surface, called “land planets”, have wider habitable zones than that of Earth-like “aqua planets” (Abe et al. 2011). We investigated complete evaporation of surface liquid water for land planets using 1D energy balance model (EBM). We found that complete evaporation occurs when the planetary flux at the dry edge, which is defined as the boundary between the dry zone and the wet zone, exceeds the critical radiation flux of water saturated atmosphere. We define “complete evaporation limit” as the minimum insolation for complete evaporation that a planet receives. This limit depends on latitude of the dry edge, efficiency of meridional heat transport, and atmospheric character that modify the value of the critical flux.