H$_2$O$_2$-induced Greenhouse Warming on Oxidized Early Mars

Yuichi Ito; George L. Hashimoto; Yoshiyuki O. Takahashi; Masaki Ishiwatari; Kiyoshi Kuramoto

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab7db4

paper

H $_{2}$ O $_{2}$ -induced Greenhouse Warming on Oxidized Early Mars

arXiv:2012.10616 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab7db4

Abstract

The existence of liquid water within an oxidized environment on early Mars has been inferred by the Mn-rich rocks found during recent explorations on Mars. The oxidized atmosphere implied by the Mn-rich rocks would basically be comprised of CO $_{2}$ and H $_{2}$ O without any reduced greenhouse gases such as H $_{2}$ and CH $_{4}$ . So far, however, it has been thought that early Mars could not have been warm enough to sustain water in liquid form without the presence of reduced greenhouse gases. Here, we propose that H $_{2}$ O $_{2}$ could have been the gas responsible for warming the surface of the oxidized early Mars. Our one-dimensional atmospheric model shows that only 1 ppm of H $_{2}$ O $_{2}$ is enough to warm the planetary surface because of its strong absorption at far-infrared wavelengths, in which the surface temperature could have reached over 273~K for a CO $_{2}$ atmosphere with a pressure of 3~bar. A wet and oxidized atmosphere is expected to maintain sufficient quantities of H $_{2}$ O $_{2}$ gas in its upper atmosphere due to its rapid photochemical production in slow condensation conditions. Our results demonstrate that a warm and wet environment could have been maintained on an oxidized early Mars, thereby suggesting that there may be connections between its ancient atmospheric redox state and possible aqueous environment.

8 pages, 7 figures, published in ApJ

H $_{2}$ O $_{2}$ -induced Greenhouse Warming on Oxidized Early Mars

Abstract

References in corpus (7)

Cited by in corpus (3)

H2​O2​-induced Greenhouse Warming on Oxidized Early Mars

Abstract

References in corpus (7)

Cited by in corpus (3)

H $_{2}$ O $_{2}$ -induced Greenhouse Warming on Oxidized Early Mars