Mars' missing water mystery takes an unexpected turn

(Web Desk) - New research shows that an intense regional dust storm transported unusually high amounts of water vapor into Mars’ upper atmosphere, boosting hydrogen escape.

The discovery reshapes understanding of how the planet gradually lost its water.

Today, Mars is known as a cold, dry desert. Yet its landscape tells a very different story about its distant past. Networks of channels, water-altered minerals, and other geological features show that the planet once had abundant liquid water and a far more active environment.

Scientists have spent decades trying to understand how that wetter world transformed into the barren planet we see now.

Although several mechanisms have been identified that could account for part of the water loss, a large portion of it has remained unexplained.

An international team of researchers has now taken an important step toward solving that mystery. In a study published in Communications: Earth & Environment, they report the first clear evidence that an unusual, intense, but localized dust storm was able to carry water vapor into the upper atmosphere during the Northern Hemisphere summer. Previously, scientists believed this season played only a minor role in water loss.

“The findings reveal the impact of this type of storm on the planet’s climate evolution and open a new path for understanding how Mars lost much of its water over time,” says Adrián Brines, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) and co-lead author of the study along with Shohei Aoki, a researcher from the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences at the University of Tokyo and the Graduate School of Science at Tohoku University.