High and dry: billion-year trends in the aridity of river-forming climates on Mars

TL;DR

This study analyzes Mars' climate history, revealing a transition from wetter highlands to drier conditions over billions of years, with implications for past habitability.

Contribution

It provides the first global database of paleolake sizes relative to catchment areas, showing a clear climate zonation and aridity trend over time on Mars.

Findings

Aridity increased in southern highlands over time.

Intermittently wetter climates persisted in lowlands.

Climate transition linked to changes in greenhouse effect or groundwater levels.

Abstract

Mars' wet-to-dry transition is a major environmental catastrophe, yet the spatial pattern, tempo, and cause of drying are poorly constrained. We built a globally-distributed database of constraints on Mars late-stage paleolake size relative to catchment area (aridity index), and found evidence for climate zonation as Mars was drying out. Aridity increased over time in southern midlatitude highlands, where lakes became proportionally as small as in modern Nevada. Meanwhile, intermittently wetter climates persisted in equatorial and northern-midlatitude lowlands. This is consistent with a change in Mars' greenhouse effect that left highlands too cold for liquid water except during a brief melt season, or alternatively with a fall in Mars' groundwater table. The data are consistent with a switch of unknown cause in the dependence of aridity index on elevation, from high-and-wet early on, to high-and-dry later. These results sharpen our view of Mars' climate as surface conditions became increasingly stressing for life.