Carbon Reservoir History of Mars Constrained by Atmospheric Isotopic Measurements and Carbonate Remote Sensing

Abstract:

The evolution of the atmosphere on Mars is one of the most intriguing problems in the exploration of the Solar System, and the climate of Mars may have evolved from a warmer, wetter early state to the cold, dry current state. Because CO₂ is the major constituent of Mars’s atmosphere, its isotopic signatures offer a unique window to trace the evolution of climate on Mars. We derive new quantitative constraints on the amount of carbonate deposition and the atmospheric pressure of Mars through time, extending into the Noachian, ~3.8 Gyr before present. This determination is based on recent Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) isotopic measurements of Mars’s atmosphere, recent orbiter, lander, and rover measurements of Mars’s surface, and a newly identified mechanism (photodissociation of CO) that efficiently enriches the heavy carbon isotope. In particular, we find that escape via CO photodissociation on Mars has a fractionation factor of 0.6 and hence, photochemical escape processes can effectively enrich ¹³C in the Mars’s atmosphere during the Amazonian. This enrichment is partially compensated by moderate carbonate precipitation during the late Noachian and/or Hesperian. The current atmospheric ¹³C/¹²C and rock and soil carbonate measurements indicate an early atmosphere with a surface pressure less than 1 bar. Only scenarios with large amounts of carbonate formation in open lakes permit higher values up to 1.8 bars. The evolutionary scenarios are fully testable with data from the MAVEN mission and further studies of the isotopic composition of carbonate in the Martian rock record through time.