Biology
Scientific paper
Dec 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p51d1161b&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P51D-1161
Biology
[0764] Cryosphere / Energy Balance, [5210] Planetary Sciences: Astrobiology / Planetary Atmospheres, Clouds, And Hazes, [6225] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Mars
Scientific paper
Growing evidence suggests that at one point in its history, Mars was possibly warm and wet. Because Mars has a larger semimajor axis compared to that of the Earth and because the Sun was 20% dimmer for the time periods concerned, potent greenhouse gases would have been required to compensate for the smaller incoming solar flux. The concentrations of these species would have been sensitive to precipitation rates and this would have set up feedbacks in the system. As the abundance of the greenhouse gases increased, temperature would have risen as a result. This increase in temperature would have caused a more vigorous hydrological cycle, leading to increased precipitation rates and a decrease in the greenhouse gas concentrations. While many of these relationships have been examined in the past, the effects of greenhouse forcings on Martian rainout rates have gone largely unstudied. As a step towards a more complete understanding of possible atmospheric processes that may have kept Mars warm, we have created an energy balance model of its hydrological cycle. We will show model predictions of precipitation rates as functions of transmissivity, absorptivity, and reflectivity. We will present scenarios for which self-consistent conditions exist (i.e. where precipitation rates, greenhouse gas concentrations, and surface temperatures are all congruous with one another). These self-consistent conditions represent stable points in the temperature-precipitation-composition system that could have persisted on Mars for long portions of the planet's history.
Breiner J.
Claire Mark
Domagal-Goldman Shawn D.
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