Papers › ExoCAM: A 3D Climate Model for Exoplanet Atmospheres
ExoCAM: A 3D Climate Model for Exoplanet Atmospheres
Eric Wolf, Ravi Kopparapu, Jacob Haqq-Misra, Thomas J. Fauchez
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
The TRAPPIST-1 Habitable Atmosphere Intercomparison (THAI) project was initiated to compare 3D climate models that are commonly used for predicting theoretical climates of habitable zone extrasolar planets. One of the core models studied as part of THAI is ExoCAM, an independently curated exoplanet branch of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Earth System Model (CESM) version 1.2.1. ExoCAM has been used for studying atmospheres of terrestrial extrasolar planets around a variety of stars. To accompany the THAI project and provide a primary reference, here we describe ExoCAM and what makes it unique from standard configurations of CESM. Furthermore, we also conduct a series of intramodel sensitivity tests of relevant moist physical tuning parameters while using the THAI protocol as our starting point. A common criticism of 3D climate models used for exoplanet modeling is that cloud and convection routines often contain free parameters that are tuned to the modern Earth, and thus may be a source of uncertainty in evaluating exoplanet climates. Here, we explore sensitivities to numerous configuration and parameter selections, including a recently updated radiation scheme, a different cloud and convection physics package, different cloud and precipitation tuning parameters, and a different sea ice albedo. Improvements to our radiation scheme and the modification of cloud particle sizes have the largest effect on global mean temperatures, with variations up to ~10 K, highlighting the requirement for accurate radiative transfer and the importance of cloud microphysics for simulating exoplanetary climates. However for the vast majority of sensitivity tests, climate differences are small. For all cases studied, intramodel differences do not bias general conclusions regarding climate states and habitability.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections