What would wind currents and water cycle look like on a tidally locked planet?
So my planet is tidally locked, it constantly faces its star like the moon faces Earth. One side is completely frozen, the other is burning hot. There is an atmosphere that allows life, and people live on a thin ring that is at the right temperature to live.
I don't think life can emerge in that pattern, so assume the planet was once fit to allow life, and some undocumented event happened, making the planet stop spinning ("tidally locked" is more precise). Enough time has passed for the climate to stabilize completely (I'm talking in million years). The current population is descended from colonists who settled on the planet after the climate had stabilised.
How would the winds and oceans be affected? [edit: the part of the question about the winds has an answer] Can a complete water cycle function on such a planet ? Winds are greatly influenced by oceans, so how would they behave ?
Are there other things that would behave in a special way ?
Note : I didn't know abut the term "tidally locked", thank you. That's what I meant (I also mixed up "rotation" and "revolution"). The part about the wind currents has already been asked.
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1 answer
So wind wise, you'd have Hadley cells that extend around the planet. Basically hot dry air on the sunward side would cause the air to heat up, rise, and make a low pressure area. Meanwhile on the far side you'd have air cooling down, falling, and causing a high pressure area.
Because the air will then move from high pressure to low pressure, it will flow back around the planet toward the hot side, taking moisture with it. These hot and cold fronts will mix most around the terminator, causing storms that will bring rain and clouds, which will help cut down on the insolation a bit.
This will probably lead to what is called a "hot eyeball earth", so snow and ice on the back side and around the terminator, leading to a well watered band further into the light, with a hot dry pupal right at the center where the clouds don't quite make it. The night side, while cold, might not be completely uninhabitable because of the constant stream of warm air from the light side.
As for water cycle, that depends a lot on your geography, but mostly it is going to fall as rain on the light side, and then evaporate and be carried back to the night side, where it will fall as snow, then sublimate and be carried back to the light side.
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