Global warming on Mars: may not be unique to just Earth
By William Atkins
Thursday, 05 April 2007 02:52
NASA researchers led by Lori Fenton, at the Ames Research Center (California) have used climate models used here on the Earth for their modeling of the Martian climate. Their results find that Mars has warmed by about 0.65 degrees Celsius in the past thirty years.
The first mapping of the planet was performed in the mid-1970s and early 1980s when the Viking mission visited Mars as Viking 1 and Viking 2, each consisting of an orbiter and rover. The Fenton team compared the maps produced by the Viking mission with more recent maps produced by the Mars Global Surveyor, which launched in November 1996 and provided data to NASA until November 2006.
These NASA scientists think that increased solar radiation has caused the ground to become warmer, which causes stronger winds, which picks up more of the red dust into the atmosphere, and which leads to more sunlight being trapped on the planet, and which leads to more global warming.
Another NASA team member, Paul Geissler, with the U.S. Geological Survey (Flagstaff, Arizona), states that the polar caps on Mars are already disappearing.
What we learn on Mars with respect to its climate and atmosphere could help us decide what is happening here on the Earth. The Fenton team reported their results this week in the journal Nature (volume 446, page 646).
