Weather on a tide-locked planet would be interesting, but boring. There would be a very cold side and a very hot side. Oceans would evaporate on the dry side and snow fall on the cold side to form a hemispherical ice cap many km in height, and very slow glacial creep would bring ice back across the twilight zone where it would be melted by warm winds.
The planet would be pulled by the gradient of gravity (tide) to an elongate shape pointing towards the primary, but this would feel "flat" since it would be an equipotential surface, so any water levels would parallel the average surface shape.
I suspect that the planet would be rather arid, with most of the water locked-up in ice but there would be a meltwater zone around the icecap. Life should be possible.
Plate tectonics and volcanoes would not cease, merely because of this tidal lock and over millions of years, continents would move and mountain chains rise and fall, all capped by the ice on the cold dark side and arid as hell on the hot dry side. Sometimes, good ocean basins would form in the twilight zone and represent ideal environments for life. other times, conditions would not favour oceans and life would retreat to a periglacial habitat.
It's possible that biological systems would evolve to transport water out of the twilight zone, and maybe even influence sunshine, solar heating, and wind patterns.
Certainly, any sufficiently advanced civilisation would be able to engineer canals, lakes, seas, and their own Riviera, where it would always be dawn, or sunset.
Pass the gin and tonic, TB...
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Re: Weather
Weather on a tide-locked planet would be interesting, but boring. There would be a very cold side and a very hot side. Oceans would evaporate on the dry side and snow fall on the cold side to form a hemispherical ice cap many km in height, and very slow glacial creep would bring ice back across the twilight zone where it would be melted by warm winds.
The planet would be pulled by the gradient of gravity (tide) to an elongate shape pointing towards the primary, but this would feel "flat" since it would be an equipotential surface, so any water levels would parallel the average surface shape.
I suspect that the planet would be rather arid, with most of the water locked-up in ice but there would be a meltwater zone around the icecap. Life should be possible.
Plate tectonics and volcanoes would not cease, merely because of this tidal lock and over millions of years, continents would move and mountain chains rise and fall, all capped by the ice on the cold dark side and arid as hell on the hot dry side. Sometimes, good ocean basins would form in the twilight zone and represent ideal environments for life. other times, conditions would not favour oceans and life would retreat to a periglacial habitat.
It's possible that biological systems would evolve to transport water out of the twilight zone, and maybe even influence sunshine, solar heating, and wind patterns.
Certainly, any sufficiently advanced civilisation would be able to engineer canals, lakes, seas, and their own Riviera, where it would always be dawn, or sunset.
Pass the gin and tonic, TB...