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Atmospheric carbon depletion as a tracer of water oceans and biomass on temperate terrestrial exoplanets

Nature Astronomy volume 8, pages 17–29 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The conventional observables to identify a habitable or inhabited environment in exoplanets, such as an ocean glint or abundant atmospheric O2, will be challenging to detect with present or upcoming observatories. Here we suggest a new signature. A low carbon abundance in the atmosphere of a temperate rocky planet, relative to other planets of the same system, traces the presence of a substantial amount of liquid water, plate tectonics and/or biomass. Here we show that JWST can already perform such a search in some selected systems such as TRAPPIST-1 via the CO2 band at 4.3 μm, which falls in a spectral sweet spot where the overall noise budget and the effect of cloud and/or hazes are optimal. We propose a three-step strategy for transiting exoplanets: detection of an atmosphere around temperate terrestrial planets in about 10 transits for the most favourable systems; assessment of atmospheric carbon depletion in about 40 transits; and measurements of O3 abundance to disentangle between a water- versus biomass-supported carbon depletion in about 100 transits. The concept of carbon depletion as a signature for habitability is also applicable for next-generation direct-imaging telescopes.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of our strategy to detect habitable exoplanetary environment via CO2 depletion.
Fig. 2: CO2 depletion as a signature of liquid water and/or life.
Fig. 3: Detectability of CO2 depletion as an habiosignature with JWST.
Fig. 4: Optimum wavelength range for transmission spectroscopy considering the effects of hazes and stellar contamination.
Fig. 5: Disentangling between the water- or life-based origin of a CO2 depletion habiosignature.

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Code availability

The PandExo and TIERRA codes, used for this paper, are publicly available.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Gillon and A. Babbin for insightful discussions. B.V.R. thanks the Heising-Simons Foundation for support. A.H.M.J.T.’s research received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (grant agreement number 803193/BEBOP).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Amaury H. M. J. Triaud, Julien de Wit.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Amaury H. M. J. Triaud

  2. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Julien de Wit, Benjamin V. Rackham, Prajwal Niraula, Ana Glidden, Oliver E. Jagoutz, Matej Peč, Janusz J. Petkowski & Sara Seager

  3. Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    Frieder Klein

  4. Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, École Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, École Polytechnique, Paris, France

    Martin Turbet

  5. Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Benjamin V. Rackham & Ana Glidden

  6. JJ Scientific, Warsaw, Poland

    Janusz J. Petkowski

  7. Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wroclaw, Poland

    Janusz J. Petkowski

  8. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sara Seager

  9. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sara Seager

  10. Laboratoire d’astrophysique de Bordeaux, Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, Pessac, France

    Franck Selsis

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Contributions

A.H.M.J.T. and J.d.W. produced the main concepts and led the team behind this Perspective. All authors contributed to the writing of this paper. F.K., M.T., O.E.J. and M.P. focused their contribution to the geological discussion of the paper. M.T., J.J.P., A.G., S.S. and F.S. particularly contributed to the atmospheric and biosignature aspects of the paper. B.V.R. and P.N. mostly contributed to the discussion and figures related to observational aspects.

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Correspondence to Amaury H. M. J. Triaud or Julien de Wit.

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Triaud, A.H.M.J., de Wit, J., Klein, F. et al. Atmospheric carbon depletion as a tracer of water oceans and biomass on temperate terrestrial exoplanets. Nat Astron 8, 17–29 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02157-9

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