Related papers: Terraforming Mars: Mass, Forcing, and Industrial T…
Recent papers by Ansari et al. (2024, Science Advances 10, eadn4650) and Richardson et al. (2025, arXiv eprint 2504.01455) have suggested that global warming of the Martian surface ('terraforming') by 35 K to sustain local habitats above…
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…
Present-day Mars is cold and dry, but mineralogical and morphological evidence shows that liquid-water existed on the surface of ancient Mars. In order to explain this evidence and assess ancient Mars's habitability, one must understand the…
The climate of early Mars has been hotly debated for decades. Although most investigators believe that the geology indicates the presence of surface water, disagreement has persisted regarding how warm and wet the surface must have been and…
The ion escape of Mars' CO$_2$ atmosphere caused by its dissociation products C and O atoms is {simulated} from present time to $\sim 4.1$ billion years ago (Ga) by {numerical models of the upper atmosphere and its interaction with the…
This roadmap outlines research pathways to determine whether Mars could be warmed with non-biological methods. It does not presuppose that warming Mars is desirable; its purpose is to identify what would need to be true for Mars to be…
On the basis of geological evidence, it is often stated that the early martian climate was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface thanks to the greenhouse effect of a thick atmosphere. We present 3D global climate simulations…
Whether extant life exists in the martian subsurface is an open question. High concentrations of photochemically produced CO and H2 in the otherwise oxidizing martian atmosphere represent untapped sources of biologically useful free energy.…
A recent study by Ramirez et al. (2014) demonstrated that an atmosphere with 1.3-4 bar of CO2 and H2O, in addition to 5-20% H2, could have raised the mean annual and global surface temperature of early Mars above the freezing point of…
A central question surrounding possible human exploration of Mars is whether crewed missions can be supported by available technologies using in situ resources. Here, we show that photovoltaics-based power systems would be adequate and…
The evidence for abundant liquid water on early Mars despite the faint young Sun is a long-standing problem in planetary research. Here we present new ab initio spectroscopic and line-by-line climate calculations of the warming potential of…
The climate of Mars likely evolved from a warmer, wetter early state to the cold, arid current state. However, no solutions for this evolution have previously been found to satisfy the observed geological features and isotopic measurements…
Post-Noachian Martian paleochannels indicate the existence of liquid water on the surface of Mars after about 3.5 Gya (Irwin et al., 2015; Palucis et al., 2016). In order to explore the effects of variations in CO$_{2}$ partial pressure and…
Early Mars may have had a warmer and denser atmosphere allowing for the presence of liquid water on the surface. However, climate model studies have not been able to reproduce these conditions even with a CO2 atmosphere of several bars.…
Explaining the evidence for surface liquid water on early Mars has been a challenge for climate modelers, as the sun was ~30% less luminous during the late-Noachian. We propose that the additional greenhouse forcing of CO2-H2…
The present Martian climate is characterized by a cold and dry environment with a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxides (CO2). In such conditions, the planetary climate and habitability are determined by the distribution of CO2 between…
The colonization of Mars presents extraordinary challenges, including radiation exposure, low atmospheric pressure, and toxic regolith. Recent advancements in synthetic biology and genetic engineering offer unprecedented opportunities to…
The decay of the martian atmosphere - which is dominated by carbon dioxide - is a component of the long-term environmental change on Mars from a climate that once allowed rivers to flow to the cold and dry conditions of today. The minimum…
In recent years, several potentially habitable, probably terrestrial exoplanets and exoplanet candidates have been discovered. The amount of CO2 in their atmosphere is of great importance for surface conditions and habitability. In the…
Atmospheric escape is an important process that influences the evolution of planetary atmospheres. A variety of physical mechanisms can contribute to escape from an atmosphere, including thermal escape, ion escape, photochemical escape, and…