Increased hydrogen escape from Mars atmosphere during periods of high obliquity

IF 12.9 1区物理与天体物理 Q1 ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS

Nature Astronomy Pub Date : 2025-05-21 DOI:10.1038/s41550-025-02561-3

Gabriella Gilli, Francisco González-Galindo, Jean-Yves Chaufray, Ehouarn Millour, François Forget, Franck Montmessin, Franck Lefèvre, Joseph Naar, Yangcheng Luo, Margaux Vals, Loïc Rossi, Miguel Ángel López-Valverde, Adrián Brines

引用次数: 0

Abstract

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 H loss rates (~3 × 10²⁶ atoms per second on average) cannot explain the geological evidence for the large volumes of liquid water on ancient Mars. Here we used the three-dimensional Mars-Planetary Climate Model to show that H loss rates could have increased by more than one order of magnitude (6 × 10²⁷ atoms per second) during higher spin axis obliquity periods, notably in the last few million years when Mars’s obliquity was about 35° on average. The resulting accumulated H escape over Mars’s history translates into an ~80 m global equivalent layer, which is close to the lower limit of geological estimates, assessing the major role of atmospheric escape in drying Mars.

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在高倾角期间，火星大气中氢气的逃逸增加

目前还不清楚火星历史上有多少水从火星上逸出。从火星大气中逸出的氢可能是导致火星干燥的主要原因，但现在的氢损失率（平均每秒约3 × 1026个原子）无法解释古代火星上有大量液态水的地质证据。在这里，我们使用三维火星-行星气候模型来显示，在较高的自转轴倾角期间，特别是在火星倾角平均约为35°的过去几百万年里，H损失率可能增加了一个数量级（6 × 1027个原子每秒）。由此产生的火星历史上累积的氢逸出转化为约80米的全球等效层，这接近地质估计的下限，评估了大气逸出在火星干燥中的主要作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Nature Astronomy Physics and Astronomy-Astronomy and Astrophysics

CiteScore

19.50

自引率

2.80%

发文量

252

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