Abstract
One-third of Mars' surface has shallow-buried H2O, but it is currently too cold for use by life. Proposals to warm Mars using greenhouse gases require a large mass of ingredients that are rare on Mars' surface. However, we show here that artificial aerosols made from materials that are readily available at Mars-for example, conductive nanorods that are ∼9 micrometers long-could warm Mars >5 × 103 time smore effectively than the best gases. Such nanoparticles forward-scatter sunlight and efficiently block upwelling thermal infrared. Like the natural dust of Mars, they are swept high into Mars' atmosphere, allowing delivery from the near-surface. For a 10-year particle lifetime, two climate models indicate that sustained release at 30 liters per second would globally warm Mars by ≳30 kelvin and start to melt the ice. Therefore, if nanoparticles can be made at scale on (or delivered to) Mars, then the barrier to warming of Mars appears to be less high than previously thought.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | adn4650 |
| Journal | Science Advances |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 32 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2024 |
Funding
We thank M. Turbet, C. Willard, M. A. Mischna, A. Geller, M. I. Richardson, C. Lee, F. Sharipov, A. Noblet, and the PlanetWRF development team. This research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high performance computing facility at Northwestern University which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research, and Northwestern University Information Technology, and with resources provided by the University of Chicago's Research Computing Center. Funding: We acknowledge that we received no external funding in support of this research. Author contributions: E.S.K. conceived research. S.A., E.S.K., R.R., L.J.S., and H.M. designed research. S.A., E.S.K., and R.R. carried out research. E.S.K. drafted the manuscript. S.A., E.S.K., R.R., L.J.S., and H.M. edited the manuscript and contributed to the final manuscript. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data, for example, full 3D climate model output files, are stored at Zenodo (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.8352416). FDTD : 3D Electromagnetic Simulator is commercial code (Lumerical). The MarsWRF source code can be made available by Aeolis Research pending scientific review and a completed Rules of the Road agreement. Requests for the MarsWRF source code should be submitted to mir@ aeolisresearch. com. Acknowledgments: We thank M. turbet, c. Willard, M. A. Mischna, A. Geller, M. i. Richardson, c. lee, F. Sharipov, A. noblet, and the PlanetWRF development team. this research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high performance computing facility at northwestern University which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research, and northwestern University information technology, and with resources provided by the University of chicago\u2019s Research computing center. Funding: We acknowledge that we received no external funding in support of this research. Author contributions: e.S.K. conceived research. S.A., e.S.K., R.R., l.J.S., and h.M. designed research. S.A., e.S.K., and R.R. carried out research. e.S.K. drafted the manuscript. S.A., e.S.K., R.R., l.J.S., and h.M. edited the manuscript and contributed to the final manuscript. Competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data, for example, full 3d climate model output files, are stored at Zenodo (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.8352416). Fdtd: 3d electromagnetic Simulator is commercial code (lumerical). the MarsWRF source code can be made available by Aeolis Research pending scientific review and a completed Rules of the Road agreement. Requests for the MarsWRF source code should be submitted to [email protected].
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General