The diversity of the thousands of exoplanets that have been discovered so far ensures the existence of a wide range of planetary atmospheres. In particular, rocky planets close to their stellar…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded a $164,157.61 grant for research to Science & Technology Corporation (STC), a minority-owned, for-profit small business. The grant, titled "Rocke3D", is focused on understanding the effects of various factors such as orbital parameters, atmospheric/oceanic heat transport, and cloud/surface ice on the habitability of exoplanets. The research will utilize a 1D radiative-convective model called QRT to explore the parameter space near the inner edges of the habitable zone and provide guidance for the computationally expensive 3D general circulation model (GCM) calculations. Additionally, the 1D model will be used to simulate the atmospheres of newly discovered rocky planets. There is no set-aside designation for this grant, which was awarded on August 23, 2018 with a completion date of May 20, 2021.

The diversity of the thousands of exoplanets that have been discovered so far ensures the existence of a wide range of planetary atmospheres. In particular, rocky planets close to their stellar habitable zones hold special promise for habitable climates. The ROCKE3D project seeks to understand the many important effects on climate that can only be investigated by full 3D GCM models. The profound effects of orbital parameters, atmospheric/oceanic heat transport, and the spatially variable impacts of clouds and surface ICE on another world must be understood in order to assess its habitability. Because of the large range of exoplanetary conditions and the complexity of climate feedbacks, IT is useful to have very detailed 1D climate models to guide the computationally expensive general circulation model calculations. I will use the general-purpose 1D radiative-convective model QRT to calculate the globally averaged temperature and cloud structure of exoplanet atmospheres of interest. The 1D model will be used to explore the parameter space near the inner edges of the habitable zone, to guide full ROCKE3D calculations of climates near these regimes. QRT will also be used for first-look simulations of the atmospheres of rocky planets that have recently been discovered [e.g. (jenkins and twickens, 2015)]. An additional module for exploring the potential habitability of exoplanet clouds will be developed and incorporated into the 1D chemical continuity equations of QRT. Microbial growth in exoplanet cloud aerosols may eventually be incorporated into GCM cloud microphysics to explore the extent of possible biospheres in planetary atmosphere.