Perspectives on atmospheric evolution from noble gas and nitrogen isotopes on Earth, Mars & Venus

Abstract

The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until recently only few direct records of atmosphere's composition in the distant past, and insights came mainly from geochemical or physical proxies and/or from atmospheric models pushed back in time. Here we review innovative approaches on new terrestrial samples that led to the determination of the elemental and isotopic compositions of key geochemical tracers, namely noble gases and nitrogen. Such approaches allowed one to investigate the atmosphere's evolution through geological period of time, and to set stringent constraints on the past atmospheric pressure and on the salinity of the Archean oceans. For Mars, we review the current state of knowledge obtained from analyses of Martian meteorites, and from the direct measurements of the composition of the present-day atmosphere by rovers and spacecrafts. Based on these measurements, we explore divergent models of the Martian and Terrestrial atmospheric evolutions. For Venus, only little is known, evidencing the critical need for dedicated missions.

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Cited by in corpus (14)

• Revealing the Mysteries of Venus: The DAVINCI Mission
• The long-term evolution of the atmosphere of Venus: processes and feedback mechanisms
• Loss and fractionation of noble gas isotopes and moderately volatile elements from planetary embryos and early Venus, Earth and Mars
• The young Sun's XUV-activity as a constraint for lower CO${}_2$-limits in the Earth's Archean atmosphere
• Formation of Venus, Earth and Mars: Constrained by isotopes
• Did Mars possess a dense atmosphere during the first ~400 million years?
• Impact Induced Atmosphere-Mantle Exchange Sets the Volatile Elemental Ratios on Primitive Earths
• Suppression of hydrodynamic escape of an H2-rich early Earth atmosphere by radiative cooling of carbon oxides
• A race against the clock: Constraining the timing of cometary bombardment relative to Earth's growth
• Nitrogen Atmospheres of the Icy Bodies in the Solar System
• Non-thermal escape of the Martian CO${}_2$ atmosphere over time: constrained by Ar isotopes
• The origin of Earth's mantle nitrogen: primordial or early biogeochemical cycling?
• Crash Chronicles: relative contribution from comets and carbonaceous asteroids to Earth's volatile budget in the context of an Early Instability
• Geoastronomy: Rocky planets as the Lavosier-Lomonosov Bridge from the non-living to the living world