Runaway greenhouse effect

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A runaway greenhouse effect occurs when a planet's atmosphere contains greenhouse gas in an amount sufficient to block thermal radiation from leaving the planet, preventing the planet from cooling and from having liquid water on its surface. A runaway version of the greenhouse effect can be defined by a limit on a planet's outgoing longwave radiation, which is asymptotically reached due to higher surface temperatures evaporating water into the atmosphere, increasing its optical depth. This positive feedback loop means the planet cannot cool down through longwave radiation (via the Stefan–Boltzmann law) and continues to heat up until it can radiate outside of the absorption bands of the water vapour. The runaway greenhouse effect is often formulated with water vapour as the condensable species. The water vapour reaches the stratosphere and escapes into space via hydrodynamic escape, resulting in a desiccated planet. This likely happened in the early history of Venus. A 2012 study on climate...

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