Thermocline Depth on Water-rich Exoplanets

Abstract

Abstract Water-rich exoplanets are a type of terrestrial planet that is water-rich and whose ocean depth can reach tens to hundreds of kilometers with no exposed continents. Due to the lack of exposed continents, neither western boundary current nor coastal upwelling exists, and ocean overturning circulation becomes the most important way to return the nutrients deposited in the deep ocean back to the thermocline and to the surface ocean. Here we investigate the depth of the thermocline in both wind-dominated and mixing-dominated systems on water-rich exoplanets using the global ocean model MITgcm. We find that the wind-driven circulation is dominated by overturning cells through Ekman pumping and subduction and by zonal (west–east) circum-longitudinal currents, similar to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current on Earth. The wind-influenced thermocline depth shows little dependence on the ocean depth, and under a large range of parameters, the thermocline is restricted within the upper layers of the ocean. The mixing-influenced thermocline is limited within the upper 10 km of the ocean and cannot reach the bottom of the ocean even under extremely strong vertical mixing. The scaling theories for the thermocline depth on Earth are applicable for the thermocline depth on water-rich exoplanets. However, due to the lack of exposed continents, the zonal and meridional flow speeds are not in the same magnitude as that in the oceans of Earth, which results in scaling relationships for water-rich exoplanets being a little different from that used on Earth.