Early Life Crises of Habitable Planets

There are a number of crises that a potentially habitable planet must avoid or surmount if its potential is to be realized. These include the runaway greenhouse, loss of atmosphere by chemical or physical processes, and long-lasting global glaciation. In this lecture I will present research on the climate dynamics governing such processes, with particular emphasis on the lessons to be learned from the cases of Early Mars and the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth.