The DOI matches its Crossref record; 47 of the 47 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Runaway and moist greenhouse atmospheres and the evolution of Earth and Venus
Abstract
A one-dimensional climate model is used to study the response of an Earth-like atmosphere to large increases in solar flux. For fully saturated, cloud-free conditions, the critical solar flux at which a runaway greenhouse occurs, that is, the oceans evaporate entirely, is found to be 1.4 times the present flux at Earth's orbit (S0). This value is close to the flux expected at Venus' orbit early in solar system history. Is is nearly independent of the amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere, but is sensitive to the H2O absorption coefficient in the 8- to 12-micrometers window region. Clouds should tend to depress the surface temperature on a warm, moist planet; thus, Venus may originally have had oceans if its initial water endowment was close to that of Earth. It lost them early in its history, however, because of rapid photodissociation of water vapor followed by escape of hydrogen to space. The critical solar flux above which water is rapidly lost could be as low as 1.1S0. The surface temperature of a runaway greenhouse atmosphere containing a full ocean's worth of water would have been in excess of 1500 degrees K--above the solidus for silicate rocks. The presence of such a steam atmosphere during accretion may have significantly influenced the early thermal evolution of both Earth and Venus.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“A planet on the inner edge of the habitable zone (see Chapter 5) could conceivably have a large abiotic buildup of oxygen through a runaway greenhouse effect while the oceans evaporate; after photodissociation of water in the atmosphere, hydrogen could escape, leaving oxygen behind (Kasting, 1988).”
From The Astrobiology Primer v2.0 (2016) · cites this paper as Kasting, 1988
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A negative feedback mechanism for the long‐term stabilization of Earth's surface temperature
Walker, J. C. G., Hays, P. B., & Kasting, J. F. (1981) · Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans · doi:10.1029/jc086ic10p09776 · Cited by 2,310
Self-citationThe Chemical Evolution of the Atmosphere and Oceans
Holland, H. D. (1984) · doi:10.1515/9780691220239 · Cited by 1,836
Evolution of the protoplanetary cloud and formation of the earth and the planets
Safronov, V. S. (1972) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 1,288
Optical Properties of the Atmosphere
Cox, L. J. (1979) · Optica Acta International Journal of Optics · doi:10.1080/713820031 · Cited by 996
Solar interior structure and luminosity variations
Gough, D. O. (1981) · Solar Physics · doi:10.1007/bf00151270 · Cited by 798
The Turbulent Structure of the Stable, Nocturnal Boundary Layer
Nieuwstadt, F. T. M. (1984) · Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences · doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1984)041 · Cited by 797
Kell, G. S., Gallagher, J. S., & Haar, L. (1984) · Cited by 512
Origin and Evolution of Planetary and Satellite Atmospheres
(1989) · University of Arizona Press eBooks · doi:10.2307/j.ctv20dsb5m · Cited by 505
Venus Was Wet: A Measurement of the Ratio of Deuterium to Hydrogen
Donahue, T. M., Hoffman, J. H., Hodges, R. R., & Watson, A. J. (1982) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.216.4546.630 · Cited by 446
Climatic consequences of very high carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s early atmosphere
Kasting, J. F., & Ackerman, T. P. (1986) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.11539665 · Cited by 391
Self-citation
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 701–708 of 708
Scientific themes in Venus exploration
Wang, Y., Yu, B., Geng, L., Hou, Z., Chai, L., Cui, J., Cai, G., Cai, T., Ding, F., Ding, X., et al. (2026) · Fundamental Research · doi:10.1016/j.fmre.2026.08.004
Characterization of Rocky Exoplanet Atmospheres from Ly α Transit Observations
Bischof, G. A., Wordsworth, R., Moores, J. E., & Cherubim, C. (2026) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae8d0e
“Importantly, an entire class of rocky planets may lie within the range of currently detectable Ly α transits: those hosting water-vapor-dominated atmospheres inside the runaway green-house limit ( A. P. Ingersoll 1969; J. F. Kasting 1988 ) .”
Guo, M., Meng, Z., Liu, S., & Redfern, S. A. T. (2026) · Life · doi:10.3390/life16091436
“Under temperate conditions, condensation near the tropopause limits the upward transport of water vapor, keeping the stratosphere relatively dry and thereby restricting photolysis-driven hydrogen escape [137,138].”
Greenhouse Effect on Planets and Moons of the Solar System
Aliakin, A. V., Karnaukhov, A. V., & Prokhorov, M. E. (2026) · Moscow University Physics Bulletin · doi:10.3103/s0027134926700402
What the Solar System Can Teach Us About Rocky Exoplanets
Byrne, P. K., Guimond, C. M., Cawood, P. A., Way, M. J., Breuer, D., Spohn, T., Duarte, J. C., Lourenço, D. L., Miozzi, F., Arnould, M., et al. (2026) · Space Science Reviews · doi:10.1007/s11214-026-01325-3 · Cited by 1
“As oceans evap-orate within an increasingly warmer atmosphere, that water could extend to stratospheric altitudes above any hypothetical protective O 3 layer and become subject to photodissociation by incident UV stellar radiation (Ingersoll 1969; Kasting 1988).”
Yoshida, T., Arima, K., Terada, N., Kuroda, T., & Kuramoto, K. (2026) · The Planetary Science Journal · doi:10.3847/psj/aeb09d
Structure and Evolution of an Exoplanet
Ollivier, M., Roques, F., Casoli, F., Encrenaz, T. A., & Selsis, F. (2008) · Astronomy and astrophysics library · doi:10.1007/978-3-540-75748-1_7
“Kasting (1988), and then Kasting et al. (1993) have applied realistic atmospheric models and estimated the limits of this zone for different types of star.”
Bioastronomy (Report of Iad Commission 51)
George, M. (1991) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-94-011-3364-7_37
Metadata
- Authors
- Kasting, J. F.
- Affiliations
- Ames Research Center (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kasting, James F.
- ORCID
- Kasting, James F.
- Venue
- Icarus
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 1988-06
- Volume
- 74
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 472-494
- ISSN
- 0019-1035 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1968152463
- Cited by
- 709
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 37 · 2017: 32 · 2016: 36 · 2015: 33 · 2014: 30 · 2013: 40 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 12.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Icarus (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Planetary Science and Exploration
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Keywords
- runaway greenhouse, Venus, Earth, water photodissociation, hydrogen escape, water vapor absorption, accretion, steam atmosphere, carbon dioxide, one-dimensional climate model
- MeSH terms
- Atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide, Climate, Light, Models, Theoretical, Scattering, Radiation, Sunlight, Temperature, Water, Solar System, Greenhouse Effect, Earth, Planet, Venus
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
