Related papers: Could Cirrus Clouds Have Warmed Early Mars?
Mars' wet-to-dry transition is a major environmental catastrophe, yet the spatial pattern, tempo, and cause of drying are poorly constrained. We built a globally-distributed database of constraints on Mars late-stage paleolake size relative…
Airborne dust plays an active role in determining the thermal structure and chemical composition of the present-day atmosphere of Mars and possibly the planet's climate evolution over time through radiative--convective and cloud…
The low temperatures and high ultraviolet (UV) radiation levels at the surface of Mars today currently preclude the survival of life anywhere except perhaps in limited subsurface niches. Several ideas for making the martian surface more…
There are many indications that anthropogenic global warming poses a serious threat to our civilization and its ecological support systems. Ideally this problem will be overcome by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Various space-based…
Much of the surface of Mars is covered by dunes, ripples, and other features formed by the blowing of sand by wind, known as saltation. In addition, saltation loads the atmosphere with dust aerosols, which dominate the Martian climate. We…
Global dust storms are the most thermodynamically significant dust events on Mars. They are produced from the combination of multiple local and regional lifting events and maintained by positive radiative-dynamic feedbacks. The most recent…
The Mars Atmosphere-Ice Coupler MAIC-2 is a simple, latitudinal model, which consists of a set of parameterisations for the surface temperature, the atmospheric water transport and the surface mass balance (condensation minus evaporation)…
We apply a model for sand dunes to calculate formation of dunes on Mars under the present Martian atmospheric conditions. We find that different dune shapes as those imaged by Mars Global Surveyor could have been formed by the action of…
Ozone is an important radiative trace gas in the Earth's atmosphere. The presence of ozone can significantly influence the thermal structure of an atmosphere, and by this e.g. cloud formation. Photochemical studies suggest that ozone can…
The gullies on Mars were discovered in the year 1999.Since then several hypotheses have appeared trying to explain the presence of these gullies. The main hypotheses are the ones which suggest that some liquid, water or CO2, was responsible…
In this study we assess the presence, nature and properties of ices - in particular water ice - that occur within these spots using HIRISE and CRISM observations, as well as the LMD Global Climate Model. Our studies focus on Richardson…
Terraforming Mars can be evaluated with a set of system-level constraints linking (i) target pressures & compositions to required atmospheric inventories, (ii) target surface temperatures to the required radiative control, (iii) inventories…
The detection of geologically recent channels at the end of the twentieth century rapidly suggested that liquid water could have been present on Mars up to recent times. A mechanism involving melting of water ice during ice ages in the last…
A new physical hypothesis predicts that a weak coupling of the orbital and rotational motions of extended bodies may give rise to a modulation of circulatory flows within their atmospheres. Driven cycles of intensification and relaxation of…
One of the striking features about Venus atmosphere is its temporal variability and dynamics, with a chaotic polar vortex, large-scale atmospheric waves, sheared features, and variable winds that depend on local time and possibly orographic…
Clouds have a strong impact on the climate of planetary atmospheres. The potential scattering greenhouse effect of CO2 ice clouds in the atmospheres of terrestrial extrasolar planets is of particular interest because it might influence the…
Cloud formation and magnetic effects are both expected to significantly impact the structures and observable properties of hot Jupiter atmospheres. For some hot Jupiters, thermal ionization and condensation can coexist in a single…
Despite decades of scientific research on the subject, the climate of the first 1.5 Gyr of Mars history has not been fully understood yet. Especially challenging is the need to reconcile the presence of liquid water for extended periods of…
We investigate the global seasonal variations of near-surface relative humidity and relevant attributes, like temperature and water vapor volume mixing ratio on Mars using calculations from modelled and measurement data. We focus on 2 am…
Mars' polar layered deposits (PLD) are comprised of layers of varying dust-to-water ice volume mixing ratios (VMR) that may record astronomically-forced climatic variation over Mars' recent orbital history. Retracing the formation of these…