Persistence of intense, climate-driven runoff late in Mars history

Edwin Kite , David Mayer , Sharon Wilson , Joel M Davis (1) , Antoine Lucas (2) , Gaia Stucky de Quay

1 NHM - The Natural History Museum [London]
2 IPGP - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris

Mars is dry today, but numerous precipitation-fed paleo-rivers are found across the planet's surface. These rivers' existence is a challenge to models of planetary climate evolution. We report results indicating that, for a given catchment area, rivers on Mars were wider than rivers on Earth today. We use the scale (width and wavelength) of Mars paleo-rivers as a proxy for past runoff production. Using multiple methods, we infer that intense runoff production of >(3-20) kg/m 2 per day persisted until <3 billion years (Ga) ago and probably <1 Ga ago, and was globally distributed. Therefore, the intense runoff production inferred from the results of the Mars Science Laboratory rover was not a short-lived or local anomaly. Rather, precipitation-fed runoff production was globally distributed, was intense, and persisted intermittently over >1 Ga. Our improved history of Mars' river runoff places new constraints on the unknown mechanism that caused wet climates on Mars.

Domaines: Interfaces continentales, environnement; Géomorphologie; Planétologie; Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]

Edwin Kite, David Mayer, Sharon Wilson, Joel M Davis, Antoine Lucas, et al.. Persistence of intense, climate-driven runoff late in Mars history. Science Advances , 2019, 5 (3), pp.eaav7710. ⟨10.1126/sciadv.aav7710⟩. ⟨hal-02331863⟩