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Anoxic chemical weathering under a reducing greenhouse on early Mars

Nature Astronomy volume 5, pages 503–509 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Reduced greenhouse gases such as methane (CH4) and hydrogen (H2) might be the only tenable solution to explain warming of the ancient Martian climate, but direct geological evidence that a reduced atmosphere actually existed on Mars has been lacking. Here we report widespread, strong Fe loss in chemically weathered bedrock sections in the Mawrth Vallis region and other 3–4-billion-year-old terrains on Mars. The separation of Fe from Al in Martian palaeosols, which is comparable to trends observed in palaeosols before the Great Oxidation Event on Earth, suggests that the ancient Martian surface was chemically weathered under a reducing greenhouse atmosphere. Although for different reasons than on Earth, Mars underwent an oxidation event of its own in the late Noachian that forever changed the geological path of the planet.

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Fig. 1: Spectral indices applied to weathered bedrock on Mars.
Fig. 2: Spectroscopic indices applied to weathering trends on the Earth and Mars.
Fig. 3: Evidence for iron loss in weathered surfaces on a global scale on Mars.
Fig. 4: HiRISE and CRISM spectral parameters of iron in minerals and rocks.
Fig. 5: Comparison between blue tones in a HiRISE IRB image and CRISM spectral parameters.
Fig. 6: Similar Fe3+ distribution patterns in early Martian and terrestrial Archaean weathering sequences.
Fig. 7: Ancient weathering processes and atmospheric evolution on Mars.

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Data availability

Data required to complete this work include: (1) hyperspectral image cubes from CRISM; (2) high-resolution colour images and digital elevation information from HiRISE; (3) regional images from the Mars Orbiter Camera; (4) reference spectra from the CAT_ENVI and ASD spectral libraries; and (5) spectral parameters and Fe concentration of Hainan basaltic weathering products. All remote sensing data used in this work are available through the Planetary Data System (https://pds.nasa.gov). Other planetary datasets are available within the JMARS software provided by Arizona State University (https://jmars.asu.edu).

Code availability

The software used to process the CRISM data is available through the Planetary Data System (https://pds.nasa.gov). Other visualization capabilities are available within the JMARS software provided by Arizona State University (https://jmars.asu.edu).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Research Grants Council General Research Fund to J.R.M. (grant number 17307417) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 91962216). J.R.M. acknowledges support from the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research Earth 4-D Program. We thank G. Wei, L. Chen and J. Huang for sample preparation and M. F. Zhou, Y. Yao, L. Chen, X. Qin, D. Hao and K. Song for spectral and chemical measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Earth and Planetary Science and Laboratory for Space Research, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    J. Liu, J. R. Michalski & B. Ye

  2. Key Laboratory of Mineralogy and Metallogeny and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mineral Physics and Materials, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

    W. Tan & H. He

  3. Planetary Science Institute, School of Earth Science, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan, China

    L. Xiao

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Contributions

J.L. carried out all spectral and geological analyses and wrote the manuscript. J.R.M. conceptualized the project and helped write the paper. W.T. contributed to the interpretation of the data and revisions of the manuscript. H.H. provided the Hainan core samples and helped interpret weathering processes. L.X. contributed to early phases of the project. B.Y. helped analyse some CRISM and HiRISE images.

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Correspondence to J. R. Michalski.

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Peer review information Nature Astronomy thanks Steven Chemtob and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–6, Tables 1 and 2, discussion and references.

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Liu, J., Michalski, J.R., Tan, W. et al. Anoxic chemical weathering under a reducing greenhouse on early Mars. Nat Astron 5, 503–509 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01303-5

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