Single biome (hot) desert planet, possible?
I have the below snippet describing a planet in a (hard) sci-fi setting. This harsh planet has some human settlers, who can survive the climate in light weight environmental suits.
The planet is a large, dry, desert world without any notable resources and there is barely any surface water, although underground water exists. Its surface entirely covered by sand and dry craggy rock formations. The days are blistering hot and the nights icy cold. It has an atmosphere which is frequently ravaged by violent, electrically charged, sandstorms, often lasting several days.
The planet is accompanied by two moons, one, a ball of frozen rock and ice, the other just a small bare rock, encircled by a debris field.
Within the constraints of the description above, I'm trying to find a way to satisfy the above described 'The days are blistering hot and the nights icy cold' for the entire planet, if possible.
The obvious problem is of course that if the planet is very hot near the equator, it won't be nearly as hot at its polar regions.
So, my question is: is there a method to basically create a single biome (hot) desert planet?
I thought of things like:
- erratic orbit?
- extreme axial tilt (maybe like Uranus)?
- wobbling axial tilt?
- wind transporting the heat?
But I don't know how those options would/could affect the climate on the planet and what other unforeseen consequences those changes would bring about.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/64065. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
So in general terms, if the planet was like Earth in size and atmosphere, but had an orbit of .8 AU's instead of 1 AU, then the planet would have an average surface temperature of Kelvin: 322, Celsius: 49, Fahrenheit: 120
At the orbit of Venus (0.723 AU) the average temperature would be Kelvin: 338, Celsius: 65, Fahrenheit: 149
For reference Earth has an average temperature of Kelvin: 288, Celsius: 15, Fahrenheit: 59
The poles would be pretty warm.
Throw in no large oceans and you won't have much water vapor in the air. That means few clouds, and very rare rain. Because of the lack of clouds all the heat will radiate off into space at night. The Sahara Desert gets cold at night.
If there is no axial tilt then there would be no seasons, so no winter.
Edit: Alternately for more creativity, the star could be part of a binary/trinary star system and so that's a lot of extra heat being pumped at it. Though nights might be iffy at that point.
A reason why there might not be much water is if there was something that is splitting the water. It could be photobiological, with a super algae that lies dormant in the sand until it gets wet. Then it reproduces as fast as it can, and in the process splits the water in to oxygen and hydrogen. This would solve the oxygen problem too. Eventually some of the oxygen and hydrogen join back up again into water, and starts the process over.
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