Been thinking about writing a solarpunk story about a far future where humans live on this habitable Earth-like moon, but I’m wondering how the weather would work if the Earth-like moon is tidally locked to a gas giant and thus one day on the moon corresponds to a full orbit which would be like longer than an Earth week. So parts of the moon would be in night for several Earth days long, and other parts would be regularly eclipsed by the massive gas giant as well, making a sort of night.
How would the weather work in such a case? Would it freeze every night on this world? Or would winds and atmosphere still regulate temperatures?
I think as an example you should start looking at polar latitudes on our planet. They experience long periods of sunlight and night over the course of a year week-long solar days are comparatively short. Temperature is largely moderated by the atmosphere. The reason the moon has it’s massive swings is because it lacks an atmosphere to even things out.
Another thing to remember is that the planet-side is going to be much brighter almost constantly. Gas giants tend to have high albedos, meaning they reflect a lot of sunlight. They will also look large in the sky (Jupiter from Io would be about 15⁰ I think). I think it would be a radiant heat source in its own right, depending on it’s temperature.
Well, it’d reflect light on the sun side.
Well sometimes the whole moon would have light, half from the sun, half from the planet. What would the line between the two be like? You think the reflected light from the planet would be brighter than the direct sunlight?
Often the whole planet would be dark, hidden from the sun behind the planet. The shadow as it transitions is interesting, as well as when parts get both sunlight and planet light.
Is there a way to make the atmosphere thicker to make temperatures more consistent? I assume you don’t want all the characters to be aquatic.
Thanks for the tips!