Stellar Activity Effects on Moist Habitable Terrestrial Atmospheres around M Dwarfs

Abstract

Transit spectroscopy of terrestrial planets around nearby M dwarfs will be a primary goal of space missions in coming decades. Three-dimensional climate modeling has shown that slow-synchronous rotating terrestrial planets may develop thick clouds at the substellar point, increasing the albedo. For M dwarfs with T eff  > 3000 K, such planets at the inner habitable zone (IHZ) have been shown to retain moist greenhouse conditions, with enhanced stratospheric water vapor ( fH 2 O > 10 −3 ) and low Earth-like surface temperatures. However, M dwarfs also possess strong UV activity, which may effectively photolyze stratospheric H 2 O. Prior modeling efforts have not included the impact of high stellar UV activity on the H 2 O. Here, we employ a 1D photochemical model with varied stellar UV, to assess whether H 2 O destruction driven by high stellar UV would affect its detectability in transmission spectroscopy. Temperature and water vapor profiles are taken from published 3D climate model simulations for an IHZ Earth-sized planet around a 3300 K M dwarf with an N 2 –H 2 O atmosphere; they serve as self-consistent input profiles for the 1D model. We explore additional chemical complexity within the 1D model by introducing other species into the atmosphere. We find that as long as the atmosphere is well-mixed up to 1 mbar, UV activity appears to not impact detectability of H 2 O in the transmission spectrum. The strongest H 2 O features occur in the James Webb Space Telescope MIRI instrument wavelength range and are comparable to the estimated systematic noise floor of ∼50 ppm.