This is how our planet’s past helps us understand planets outside the solar system

Terrible, mighty, and terrifying storms: Storms hundreds of kilometers wide are capable of draining nearly half a meter of water in a few hours“This is the result that climate models give when we ask them what happened when extreme heat was our daily bread.

Researchers have modeled Earth’s history for many years to better understand the atmosphere and identify models that help us predict what will happen in the near future. In it, this work is not new. The interesting thing comes more from the result than the methodology. Inadvertently, these Harvard researchers They came face to face With a “new and totally unexpected state of the atmosphere” that not only helps us know our planet better, but also It will allow us to look at the dynamics of the atmosphere of exoplanets in a different way.

A ‘huge battery’ of water is about to explode

“If you can see the tropics at the same time, you’ll realize it’s always raining somewhere,” he explained. Jacob Seely, a climate scientist at Harvard University. What we found is that in very hot climates, these storms are at their best. “It can go several days without rain anywhere and all of a sudden A massive storm will break out that will reach all areas at once and be able to dump a huge amount of rainIn a very short time. Then comes the ‘silence of a few days’ and starts again.

Like I said at the beginning, this is not research on current climate change. For this to happen, researchers had to do it Increase levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 64 times or increase the brightness of the sun by 10% who receives the earth. Thus, temperatures reach 54 degrees. Something very far from our reality, but not far from the dozens of planets that we find in outer space.

What happens at these temperatures is that a “layer of damping” is created., a layer of water vapor that prevents convective clouds (and forms rain clouds). This traps moisture near the surface until evaporation breaks the equilibrium and causes a flood of approx.

For practical purposes, the researchers explained, it’s like charging a “huge battery”: cold accumulates on top of the damping layer and heat under it; When something breaks this barrier, a storm breaks out. When the storm subsides, the cycle begins again. But beyond that, this discovery is further proof of that The best strategy for getting a good understanding of what we see outside the solar system is to get a good understanding of what happened in our own system.