Swansong biospheres II: the final signs of life on terrestrial planets near the end of their habitable lifetimes

O'Malley-James, Jack T., Cockell, Charles S., Greaves, Jane ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3133-413X and Raven, John A. 2014. Swansong biospheres II: the final signs of life on terrestrial planets near the end of their habitable lifetimes. International Journal of Astrobiology 13 (03) , pp. 229-243. 10.1017/S1473550413000426

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Abstract

The biosignatures of life on Earth do not remain static, but change considerably over the planet's habitable lifetime. Earth's future biosphere, much like that of the early Earth, will consist of predominantly unicellular microorganisms due to the increased hostility of environmental conditions caused by the Sun as it enters the late stage of its main sequence evolution. Building on previous work, the productivity of the biosphere is evaluated during different stages of biosphere decline between 1 and 2.8 Gyr from present. A simple atmosphere–biosphere interaction model is used to estimate the atmospheric biomarker gas abundances at each stage and to assess the likelihood of remotely detecting the presence of life in low-productivity, microbial biospheres, putting an upper limit on the lifetime of Earth's remotely detectable biosignatures. Other potential biosignatures such as leaf reflectance and cloud cover are discussed

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	1473-5504
Date of Acceptance:	16 October 2013
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2022 09:56
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/89719

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