Related papers: Could Cirrus Clouds Have Warmed Early Mars?
Characterizing the Martian atmosphere is an essential objective to understand its meteorology and its climate. The lower atmosphere (< 40 km) and middle atmosphere (40-80 km) of Mars appear dynamically coupled at much higher levels than in…
$\text{CO}_{\text{2}}$ ice clouds are important for polar energy balance and the carbon dioxide cycle on Mars. However, uncertainties remain regarding their physical and radiative properties, which control how polar $\text{CO}_{\text{2}}$…
For the past several decades, numerous attempts have been made to model the climate of Mars with extensive studies focusing on the planet's dynamics and the understanding of its climate. While physical modeling and data assimilation…
Recent findings suggest Mars may have been a clement environment for the emergence of life, and may even have compared favorably to Earth in this regard. These findings have revived interest in the hypothesis that prebiotically important…
We present results from the Met Office Unified Model (UM), a world-leading climate and weather model, adapted to simulate a dry Martian climate. We detail the adaptation of the basic parameterisations and analyse results from two…
The history of rivers on Mars is an important constraint on Martian climate evolution. The timing of relatively young, alluvial fan-forming rivers is especially important, as Mars' Amazonian atmosphere is thought to have been too thin to…
At low ambient pressure, temperature gradients in porous soil lead to a gas flow, called thermal creep. With this regard, Mars is a unique as the conditions for thermal creep to occur in natural soil only exist on this planet in the solar…
Early Mars climate research has well-defined goals (Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group 2018). Achieving these goals requires geologists and climate modelers to coordinate. Coordination is easier if results are expressed in terms of…
The Martian climate is governed by an annual cycle, that results in the condensation of CO$_{2}$ ice during winter, up to a meter thick at the pole and thousands of kilometers in extension. Water and dust may be trapped during the…
The illuminated dusty surface of Mars acts like a gas pump. It is driven by thermal creep at low pressure within the soil. In the top soil layer this gas flow has to be sustained by a pressure gradient. This is equivalent to a lifting force…
Active dark flows known as recurring slope lineae have been observed on the warmest slopes of equatorial Mars. The morphology, composition and seasonality of the lineae suggest a role of liquid water in their formation. However, internal…
A candidate explanation for Early Mars rivers is atmospheric warming due to surface release of H$_2$ or CH$_4$ gas. However, it remains unknown how much gas could be released in a single event. We model the CH$_4$ release by one mechanism…
Carbon dioxide clouds, which are speculated by models on solar and extra-solar planets, have been recently observed near the equator of Mars. The most comprehensive identification of Martian CO2 ice clouds has been obtained by the near-IR…
Radiative effects of water ice clouds have noteworthy consequences on the Martian atmosphere, its thermal structure and circulation. Accordingly, the inclusion of such effects in the LMD Mars Global Climate Model (GCM) greatly modifies the…
Cirrus clouds are key modulators of Earth's climate. Their dependencies on meteorological and aerosol conditions are among the largest uncertainties in global climate models. This work uses three years of satellite and reanalysis data to…
In this work we present laboratory measurements on the reduction of the threshold friction velocity necessary for lifting dust if the dust bed is illuminated. Insolation of a porous soil establishes a temperature gradient. At low ambient…
Earth has had oceans for nearly four billion years and Mars had lakes and rivers 3.5-3.8 billion years ago. However, it is still unknown whether water has ever condensed on the surface of Venus because the planet - now completely dry - has…
Results are presented from a 3-D Pluto general circulation model (GCM) that includes conductive heating and cooling, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE) heating by methane at 2.3 and 3.3 microns, non-LTE cooling by cooling by…
The Martian atmosphere experiences large diurnal variations due to the ~24.6 h planetary rotation and its low heat capacity. Understanding such variations on a planetary scale is limited due to the lack of observations, which are greatly…
It is still unknown how much water has escaped from Mars during its history. Hydrogen escape from Mars's atmosphere probably played a major role in drying the planet, but present-day Hloss rates (about 3x10^26 atoms per second on average)…