Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

Michael Bloxham · 2002-04-02 14:56:44

At what level will the ocean stop growing? Will it top out at 70% of total area, like here on earth? Or will it top out at 50% or less? I beleive the quickest way to terraform mars is to radically incease the size of the ocean in the first couple of decades. Plankton are much more effecient at converting CO2 to oxygen than any earth bound flora. They also multiply hundreds of times faster than anything on land. But how exactly is an ocean created in the dry atmosphere of mars? And how is it controlled? To see what mars might look like at different ocean levels, refer to the zoomable map, Mars topography from MOLA

Shaun Barrett · 2002-04-14 05:24:51

It's probably impossible to answer your questions about Martian oceans, Michael.
Unlike our knowledge, from direct evidence, that Earth has had oceans of liquid water for at least 3.5 billion years, and probably as long as 4 billion years, we still don't know for certain that Mars ever had liquid water on its surface at all!
The evidence is definitely there, but the "White Mars" brigade (led by the Australian, Nick Hoffman) keep telling us that all those channels could as easily be due to CO2 activity as H2O activity. Personally, I'm in the H2O camp! But that's just my opinion; for what it's worth.
Even assuming that Mars had lots of water in its early days, was it almost always in the form of ice-sheets, occasionally melted by localised vulcanism? Maybe. What if we assume that somehow Mars was warm enough for the water to exist as a liquid, was there enough of it to form a northern ocean? Possibly.
If we assume the erstwhile existence of Oceanus Borealis, can we be sure of its volume and, hence, what area of the planet it covered. Probably not. (For a start, Martian topography during the era of the purported ocean may have been significantly different .... such a pity we didn't have a MOLA in orbit around Mars a couple of billion years ago! ) And even if we could be absolutely sure how much water was there in the beginning, we have no reliable knowledge as to how much remains today.
As you can see, we have way too many unknowns in our equations to be certain of anything about oceans on Mars. Of course, they can't hang you for speculating! So I can put my 2 cents worth in and say that, to my way of thinking, it seems unlikely that any Martian ocean ever covered more than about 40% of the surface.
But until we get more facts, your guess is as good as mine!

Josh Cryer · 2002-04-14 06:19:37

It's H2O, it simply can't be anything else...

It's my personal opinion, after having seen the latest GRS data, that there is going to be enough water to fill the ancient ocean that was once on Mars (and indicated by the MOLA data).

I absolutely agree with you, though Michael, we discussed this a little in the ?Reds? thread in the Terraforming section. Plankton would undoubteldy be the best wat to oxygenate Mars' atmosphere. A million solar power factories couldn't possibly convert as much as an ocean full of [genetically engineered] plankton.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-04-14 19:10:23

Let's assume Josh is right ..... because I want him to be right! Let's assume Mars still has a vast amount of water.
I always think it's a pity that the old ocean basin (if that's what the northern hemisphere is) happens to be centred on the planet's north pole. Have a look at Earth for comparison: We have huge oceans, one of which (the Arctic) is centred on our north pole. Even though we get more than twice the insolation that Mars gets, have a dense atmosphere, and have the moderating influence of the Gulf Stream which brings warmth from the tropics to the cold polar waters, we still have a massive permanent ice cap.
If we warm up Mars, we'd better make a #### good job of it, and maintain the warmth carefully, because any future ocean on Mars is going to want to freeze over the minute it gets half a chance!!
And by the way, the more efficient we are at keeping the Oceanus Borealis ice-free, the more the phytoplankton will flourish. And the more the phytoplankton flourish, the more CO2 they will pull from the air, and the less efficient will be the greenhouse effect we need to keep the ice at bay! A perfect negative loop: The more we succeed, the more we fail!
This is where the orbiting mirrors and the fluorocarbon gases come in. We need to raise the average temperature to maybe 20 or 25 deg.C (higher than Earth's 15 deg.C). Otherwise 90% of our lovely new ocean will be permanently frozen.

Adrian · 2002-04-15 03:32:07

This reminds me of one of KSR's stories, 'A Martian Romance' I think, in which the terraforming process went wrong. In short - the oceans froze over; this vastly increased the albedo of the planet's surface and temperatures plummetted. The reason for the oceans freezing over in the first place is put down to either the fact that

a) the initial warming of Mars only melted the permafrost to a small depth (meaning that the remaining permafrost was all fine and well, and subsequently re-froze the water above) or

b) all the GM microbes they introduced got killed off by some strange peroxide or UV induced mutation.

Anyway, it's a good story and personally I don't think we hear enough stories about how terraforming might go wrong - it seems to me that it's a real possibility, and the consequences can be dire.

Josh Cryer · 2002-04-15 05:12:19

Well, water is a better insulator than carbon dioxide. This is why there are concerns about the ice caps melting here on Earth (higher temperatures -> higher humidity -> even higher temperatures). If I knew more atmospheric science I might be able to really predict what would happen.

Anyway, science is about predicting what would go right and wrong. If we started a terraforming process I would think that the calculations would be extremely accurate, requiring only a few modifications during critical steps after deployment.

gbbaker · 2002-04-28 08:16:40

I second what Shaun said:
We have to remember that pulling co2 from the atmosphere is a negative influence to a terraforming process.
There are a lot of factors which criss cross each other in there negative and positive influence when it comes to the role that water plays in the terraforming project.

Positive influences of water release during terraforming:

1)After heating (with perflurocarbons) it helps us penetrate the heat into the crust but that is regulated by the porosity of the regolith.

2)It is abundant (current hydrogen maps are indeed water; it can't be anything else as methane and ammonia don't last long on mars) and has a thermal absortion band that will help the greenhouse gas blanket.

1 and 2 interplay both negatively and positively as water vapor adds atmopsere it becomes slightly harder & harder to release co2 in the colder areas but... it being an added gas - as it is added it supports surface liquid water stability since the water "triple point" will change. Brine will stay grounded helping our heating effect penetrate into the surface.

3)It is life supporting. Numer 1 medium for bacteria to move around and should help them protect against radiation to some extent while the co2 is being dissassociated to form an ozone layer.
3a)We need it to grow plants and maybe use it for energy processes.

4)Keeps the dust grounded. PFC's are much more effective as a greenhouse blanket than a dust storm and dust storms just ruin equipment. As temperatures increase over time water will be more evenly distributed across the planet. Probably initial water and co2 release effects will be the #1 cause of dust storms since what we would be doing is sort of analogous to waking a sleeping giant.

5)It will weather the olivine into other minerals increasing the variety of the types of resources we have available and seperating them into more clearly defined areas.
5a)I can't remember how since it's been sometime since I've studied terraforming but - I'm pretty sure that it will through this process slightly increase the atmospheric content of oxygen by interacting with the many oxides in the regolith.

6) In liquid form on the surface it provides a medium for magnetic particles to move around and clump together and also align them selves along the current strong crustal magnetic lines that are currently there.

7) Over time it will weather and expose different areas in the north now covered by "rust dust" so that we can easily access any previously "hard to get" minerals that may exist under that layer.

8) Of course we all know that water can be used for a variety of things.

lastly it is my opinion that circulating water will help to form a magnetosphere.

Negative influences of water of terraforming:

1) As we are mining fluorine and carbon and sulfur and combining them to spew out pfc's and sf6 gases for our greenhouse blanket water acts in a negative way in that as the blanket is forming and the water is heating up and evaporating/subliming into the atmosphere the atmosphere is thickening. Thickening of the atmosphere although helpful in the long term for humans and also supportive of surface liquid water stability it keeps the co2 from releasing in the colder and "harder to release" areas during our terraforming project.

The whole relationship between pfc/sf6 co2 and water is dependent on the continuing increase of surface temperatures and it works on a negative curve.
PFC's although the number one method for terraforming mars by leveraging the power of the sun is highly effective at first and as time goes the thicker the atmosphere gets the less effective it gets in releasing co2.
The first 100 millibars of co2 and water that gets released will be far more effective in heating the planet than the next 100 millbars and so on.
Eventually after many years the "hard to get at" areas of co2 still remain hard to get at due to temperature depth and low porosity of the regolith and a thick atmosphere preventing sublimation.

2) Water clouds will reflect some sunlight.

3) It seems also that surface water will spread and unless surface temperatures can be stabily increased, ice will form and this will also increase albedo and work against us.
Look at earths albedo.

BOTTOM LINE:

As far as I'm concerned it seems to me that we have only the following options to bring mars up to a STABLE earth temperature and an atmopshere from which we can start to work with.

1)We send nuclear powered PFC's/sf6 machines that mine and spew the gases into the atmopshere.

2)We turn the planet dark as possible by converting the rust in the regolith into magnetite by using nuclear powered slow roving machines that inject anaerobic hydrogen dependent rust converting micro-organisms and have drills that drill into the surface and heat the regolith up to provide a safe haven for these organsims until temperatures permit them to spread on their own. This method works in the exact opposite curve of pfc's machines (miniscule effect at first - humongous effect many years later) and provides the much needed underlying support of stabily increased surface temperatures which the use of pfc's would depend on.

3) Whatever form of black clorophyl that was found in the florida waters recently needs to be isolated cultivated and made to be "on the ready" for depositing in the martian oceans.

3) Fully catalog and isolate the current earth underground organisms that contribute to upper mantle/lower crust convection and send a diverse payload of these to mars for injection into the mars crust at the appropriate depth to insure adequate temperature for their survival and proliferation.

That covers all the above plus possibly sets us up for long term nitrogen creation by these underground organisms. Nitrates/nitrites come from dead life. There is a lot more living space in the planet than on the surface and utilizing the leverage of micro-organisms to pull the volumous potential of nitrogen production which that living space provides is a long term optimum method for our much needed buffer gas on the surface.

Inhabitating mars will involve maintenance by way of maintaining dark surfaces. Laws and rules will come about for it.
Laws and rules will come about for maintaining fluorine and carbon levels off limits for commercial uses. Reserved for the maintaining of pfc's.
Lakes and seas will have to maintain a certain level of black clorophyl.

Canth · 2002-05-07 14:06:01

Water vapor is a good insulator but not as good as CO2. Water also leaves the atmosphere much more easily in the form of precipitation. The earths magnetic field is created by the convection of molten metals deep inside it and is not generated by its oceans. Europa's magnetic field is caused (in theory) through interactions between it's electrically conductive salt water ocean and Jupiter's intense magnetic field. Mars has no such field to interact with and any ocean would (almost certainly) be much smaller on Mars. To introduce a significant Martian magnetic field would likely require reheating it's core or the construction of huge magnetic field generating stations which perhaps could utilize an ocean to help with the distribution of the field. Melting mar's core would likely require the detonation of huge quantities of fusion or fission weapons. The creation of a magnetic field would require a huge quantity of time and effort which might not be worth it. I am undecided.

gbbaker · 2002-05-08 03:41:57

Any definitive statements as to a single cause of earths magnetic field are unfounded. Current theories on the source of earths magnetic field are just that, they are "theoretical."
We don't know for sure that it is only from a convecting spinning molten core in interaction with the mantle and that it this and this only which is wholey responsible for the magnetosphere.
In my estimation it is a number of factors which also contribute to the convection and spinning of all layers;
and it is the hydrology,
and it is the depth and magnitude of the underground biosphere,
and it is the type of material composition in relation to bodies nearby exerting gravitational influence,
and it is very slightly surface life,
and it is the composition of the atmosphere.

Tri · 2002-06-01 18:49:50

Just for the sake of fantasy . . .

Linked is a 1000x500 pixel global map of Mars as imagined after terraformation. I based it on the MOLA elevation map and the one in the front of Blue Mars. I'm working on something of an atlas based on the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.

http://www.geocities.com/rgbmars/bluemars.htm

Phobos · 2002-06-01 18:56:31

Tri could you give a url to your map? The picture seems to be suffering from stage fright.

Tri · 2002-06-02 11:58:14

Hey thanks, I provided a link to the page, instead.

tri

Jan-Erik · 2002-07-17 10:52:06

Seems the future "martian terraformers" need to:

1. know "the Earth-system" thoroughly,
2. know Mars's isitu resources and system even more thoroughly,

and only then will they know how to go about "terraforming" their new world in the most cost effective way.

I suspect learning by "trial and error" will be the way to do it, the practical approach, using theoretical knowledge in some applied manner....

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#1 2002-04-02 14:56:44

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#2 2002-04-14 05:24:51

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#3 2002-04-14 06:19:37

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#4 2002-04-14 19:10:23

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#5 2002-04-15 03:32:07

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#6 2002-04-15 05:12:19

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#7 2002-04-28 08:16:40

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#8 2002-05-07 14:06:01

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#9 2002-05-08 03:41:57

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#10 2002-06-01 18:49:50

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#11 2002-06-01 18:56:31

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#12 2002-06-02 11:58:14

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

#13 2002-07-17 10:52:06

Re: Area of Martian Ocean - Can the ocean conditions be controlled?

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