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

Kite, ES
; 
Mayer, DP
; 
Wilson, SA
; 
Lucas, AS
; 
Stucky de Quay, G
; 
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27/03/2019
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2019-04-20
Subject Terms
paleo-rivers
Mars
planetary climate evolution
river runoff
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Earth sciences
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Abstract
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/m2 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.
Citation
E. S. Kite, D. P. Mayer, S. A. Wilson, J. M. Davis, A. S. Lucas, G. Stucky de Quay, Persistence of intense, climate-driven runoff late in Mars history. Sci. Adv. 5, eaav7710 (2019).
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American Association for the Advancement of Science
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Science Advances
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http://hdl.handle.net/10141/622673
DOI
10.1126/sciadv.aav7710
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Journal Article
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Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
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2375-2548
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