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• THE LUNAR EXPLORER ARCHIVES
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• MARS
• SOLAR SYSTEM
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A R C H I V E S

Mars is a very windy place: so windy, in fact, that the bright and heavily oxidized Martian Soil is almost constantly being scoured away by Martian Winds, thus revealing, in some areas, a darker, Subsurface Soil.

The result of this process is in the making (even though on a less than minimal scale) the whole Red Planet a little bit warmer. In other words: Mars is experiencing its own brand of Climate Change. But is this Martian Climate Change somehow related to planet Earth's "greenhouse gas driven" Climate Change?

Well, probably not (even though we know that large quantities of gas (Methane and CO2 mostly) are released, on a daily base, in the Martian Atmosphere; but it is, however, very important to try to understand such a Climate Change process so that we can achieve a better understanding of how Rocky Planets evolve and change over time.

A young "Investigator" - named Lori Fenton -, together with her colleagues at NASA Ames Research Center and the USGS in Flagstaff Arizona, published an article in the journal "Nature" revealing the phenomenon of the rise in the Martian Global Temperature over the past 20 years. The rise, which is less that 2° for both Surface and Air Temperature, is still significant from a strictly Geologic perspective.

The mechanism causing the warming is relatively simple and related to the change in brightness, or "Albedo", of the Martian Surface. The light, bright and, as we just said, heavily oxidized Martian Surface Soil reflects a significant amount of Solar Radiation, tending to keep Mars extremely cold. The darker, more absorbent Subsurface Soil, instead (and as revealed after the passage, for example, of a Dust Devil or an even greater Aeolian Event), makes both the Surface and the Air (at a very low altitude though) retain more heat.

In the end, the result of more exposed Dark Subsurface Soil is that the Temperature of Mars (we repeat: both Surface and Air - and the latter at VERY low altitudes) has gone up between one and two degrees, over the last two decades. Such a change is very intriguing and has never before been seen on any other known Planet.

The Martian Atmosphere is significantly thinner than the one on Earth; actually it is similar to what is found on our home planet at about 100.000 feet of altitude! However, the Winds that result from the movement of even such a thin Atmosphere are clearly strong enough to have, over a very long time, a profound impact on the whole Planet.

Comparative Planetologists and climate Modelers will be monitoring Mars closely for the next 20 years and beyond, trying to discern if there is some sort of pattern to the changes and if the trend seems to be continuing. But the ultimate truth is, once again, that we have only begun to monitor and record such data and therefore we are just beginning to track changes, as they unfold".