Maintaining Stable, Habitable Climates in Different Tectonic Regimes

The potential for other worlds to sustain life, particularly without the presence of plate tectonics, is an ongoing area of inquiry. This work analyzes the possibility for planets to maintain stable, temperate climates under four different tectonic regimes: plate tectonics, stagnant lid, episodic tectonics, and heat-pipe. The model is of a rocky world with a basalt surface layer, on which differing rates of volcanism, CO₂ emissions, and weathering are imposed. It also incorporates a coupled water-CO₂ greenhouse effect. Surface heat flux from volcanism is not found to cause grave deviations from habitable temperatures except for a case with an unrealistically thick crust. The rate of basaltic weathering, being exponentially dependent on the temperature of the basalt, may cause CO₂ to be drawn very rapidly from the atmosphere if the surface temperature and volcanism rate can remain high. Finally, under the model's configurations, the surface temperature was maintained at a stable value almost regardless of the CO₂ greenhouse effect, possibly due to the strong contribution from water vapor to the greenhouse effect.