The Runaway Greenhouse Atmospheres

Brilliant Essays
Atmosphere evolution on rocky planets

Life on Earth, how is it possible? Why is it only Earth? This is a common question asked by many scientists around the world, and one which we may not find the answer to for a long while yet. It is very interesting to look at our own world, but what makes it so special? What about Mars and Venus? Our two closest neighbours, surely they could or could have held the possibility of life on their surfaces? It is very intriguing that even though these planets are in such close vicinity to the Earth, they each have conditions which are although similar in some cases, in most other cases, portray a completely different story. Thus it is interesting to see how the evolution of each of these planets, formed from the same protoplanetary disk
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and Watson, A. (2012). The runaway greenhouse: implications for future climate change, geoengineering and planetary atmospheres. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, [online] 370(1974), pp.4197-4216. Available at: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1974/4197.short [Accessed 21 Jan. 2015].
Kasting, J. (1987). Runaway and moist greenhouse atmospheres and the evolution of Earth and Venus. [online] Sciencedirect.com. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0019103588901169# [Accessed 21 Jan. 2015].
Kasting, J. (1993). Earth's early atmosphere. Science, [online] 259(5097), pp.920-926. Available at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/259/5097/920.short [Accessed 22 Jan. 2015].
Kasting, J. (2002). Life and the Evolution of Earth's Atmosphere. Science, [online] 296(5570), pp.1066-1068. Available at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/296/5570/1066.short [Accessed 22 Jan. 2015].
Kasting, J. and Whitmire, D. (1992). Habitable Zones around Main Sequence Stars. [online] Sciencedirect.com. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103583710109# [Accessed 22 Jan.

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