[Vision2020] GISS Best Paper 2016: "Was Venus the first habitable world of our solar system?"

[Ted Moffett]

I have an idea for another theoretical paper:  "Was Earth the last
"habitable" planet of our solar system before the anthropocene?"
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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Was Venus the first habitable world of our solar system?

https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/wa06600o.htmlPublication AbstractsWay et al.
2016

Way, M.J., A.D. Del Genio, N.Y. Kiang, L.E. Sohl, D.H. Grinspoon, I. Aleinov,
M. Kelley, and T. Clune, 2016: Was Venus the first habitable world of our
solar system? Geophys. Res. Lett., *43*, no. 16, 8376-8383,
doi:10.1002/2016GL069790.

Present-day Venus is an inhospitable place with surface temperatures
approaching 750 K and an atmosphere 90 times as thick as Earth's. Billions
of years ago the picture may have been very different. We have created a
suite of 3-D climate simulations using topographic data from the Magellan
mission, solar spectral irradiance estimates for 2.9 and 0.715 Gya,
present-day Venus orbital parameters, an ocean volume consistent with
current theory, and an atmospheric composition estimated for early Venus.
Using these parameters we find that such a world could have had moderate
temperatures if Venus had a prograde rotation period slower than ~16 Earth
days, despite an incident solar flux 46-70% higher than Earth receives. At
its current rotation period, Venus's climate could have remained habitable
until at least 0.715 Gya. These results demonstrate the role rotation and
topography play in understanding the climatic history of Venus-like
exoplanets discovered in the present epoch.
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