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So I'm currently building the geography of my world. It's supposed to be a Super Earth approximately 2.3 times the size and 1.7 times the mass. It's gravity is slightly weaker and it has slightly higher oxygen and atmospheric pressure (1.3x and 1.1x).

The issue is I need to eliminate tropics as a biome. This means I need a cool, 17C maximum equator and probably even colder poles. I won't do much with altitude because this doesn't cool the coastline enough to turn them into cold places.

Deserts can be hotter, but with little temperature variation, I need a way for the tropics to stay chilly and temperate year round. Since the ice age (last glacial maximum) wasn't high enough, how big would, compared to Earth, the polar ice caps of this world need to be?

Edit: I think I didn't explain myself well enough. I'm asking how big would the ice caps be on Earth if the temperature on the tropics was as low as it was at higher latitudes despite receiving more energy from the sun. This means "being more exposed" since I assumed the radiation coming from the world's star is already going to be less than that of our sun in our Earth.

Like, would the ice caps end up, on average, near Mexico?

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  • $\begingroup$ The tropics are defined by Insolation, they're the area that receives direct(vertical) insolation for part or all of the year, they are not, in themselves, a biome of any kind. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Commented May 30 at 0:44
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    $\begingroup$ You have a bigger, colder world than Earth, so its ice caps will be bigger. There is no deterministic way to determine exactly how much bigger - notably because Earth's ice caps vary in size year to year. But even if we us median values... differences in atmospheric pressure, atmospheric composition, energy from the star, surface water (volume, salinity, surface area)... there's simply too many variables to give you an answer other than "bigger." $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented May 30 at 3:19
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, but if your planet will be larger than Earth and have a greater mass, its gravity will actually be stronger. One option is to simply omit the mass and say that your planet will be much less dense than Earth. $\endgroup$
    – MarcoMarksman
    Commented Jun 5 at 18:03

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