Ancient Mars Climate With a Polar Ocean and Ice Sheet Dynamics

The ancient climate of Mars remains mysterious since different approaches give inconsistent results. On the one hand, geomorphological clues indicate that an ocean should have been stable 3 Ga, due to indirect tsunami morphologies. On the other hand, some climate model studies indicate that water is more stable in the form of ice on the highlands. Here we propose a new suite of numerical simulations, coupling atmospheric climate with ocean circulation and ice sheet models to investigate the ancient Martian climate. The results quantify the total water required for such a cold, but wet climate: in essence we find as much water in the form of ice sheets as in the ocean. This number is plausible if a significant amount of water has disappeared into the ground, for instance in the form of mineral alteration, or in a deep porous reservoir.

The data of this archive present the major output of this publication.

If you use this data, please cite: Schmidt, F., Way, M. J., Quiquet, A., Aleinov, I., & Dumas, C. (2025). Ancient Mars climate with a polar ocean and ice sheet dynamics. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 130, e2025JE008970.https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JE008970