Terraformers Take Note - ...(unintended consequences)

Palomar · 2004-11-27 08:27:39

*Found this little item at livescience.com:

Citrus Crops Freeze Themselves
November 19: The conversion of Florida swamps to citrus crops over the decades appears to exacerbate freezes that threaten your OJ supply. The logic is simple: Water retains heat better at night than land, so where once there were wetlands, now there's morning frost. NASA and the USGS funded a study of satellite data, released yesterday, that showed the link. "The conversion of the wetlands to agriculture itself could have resulted in or enhanced the severity of recent freezes in some of the agricultural lands of south Florida," said Curtis Marshall of Colorado State University. Image: USDA

*I'm wondering how potential terraforming (on Mars especially or elsewhere) will be able to foresee consequences similar to this example. Of course, anything we learn here can be taken elsewhere.

Will be just one of many, I suppose.

--Cindy

Dook · 2004-11-27 10:06:30

Large bodies of water resist temperature change much better than land surfaces. Once we have oceans the temperature variations will be naturally tamed. Air and sea currents will form and should be as dependable as the earth's.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-11-27 18:48:47

Yes, Cindy, an interesting example of how a micro-climate can be influenced by human activity, even to the detriment of that very activity.

Dook's right, of course, in saying oceans on Mars would act as heat sinks and tend to moderate temperature swings. But I've wondered for a long time now whether there's something profound about the topography on Mars which might have been a significant contributor to its dessication and freezing.

If we look at Mars' surface and compare it to Earth's, it's almost like Mars has one enormous continental plate, taking up about 60% of the surface area and mainly occupying the south of the planet, and one huge oceanic plate taking up the other 40%. Even if earlier volcanism had been vigorous enough to drive tectonic plate movement, there was probably too much continental plate area, a kind of logjam, to allow much movement.
Without the movement of continental plates and subduction of oceanic plates we have here, recycling carbonate rocks down into the mantle where the CO2 could be returned to the atmosphere via volcanoes would not have occurred.
In addition, the only ocean would have been centred on the north pole. Without the benefit of a planetwide system of oceanic currents, transferring warmer water from the equator to the colder polar regions, there would have been a tendency for the Oceanus Borealis to freeze and stay frozen.
With the greater distance of Mars from the Sun, and the inexorable sequestering of more and more of the thick greenhouse-producing CO2 atmosphere into the crustal rocks without tectonic recycling, the martian air would have thinned and the planet would have been locked into a permanent deep freeze.

These things bother me because I'm a terraformer. Your comments on the micro-climate in Florida, Cindy, certainly give me food for thought about the macro-climate on Mars; and it's not necessarily a particularly palatable snack! You remind me of nagging doubts I've had for some years.
While changing the local climate in Florida may be as simple as draining some waterlands, even massive planetary engineering on Mars to create a benign climate for colonisation may prove to be a futile exercise. It's possible that the very structure of Mars has been a major player in its climatic deterioration in the distant past and will conspire against our terraforming efforts there in the future.

This potential problem has been addressed to some extent in as much as orbiting solettas have been suggested to concentrate solar heating on Mars' north pole. But I've yet to see anything much of what we've learned about terrestrial air and ocean currents being applied to a hypothetical terraformed Mars.
Once we've established a warmer wetter Red Planet, will it be a constant engineering struggle to keep the place from reverting to its old ways?!
???
[Sorry! Rambled on a bit with this one.]

Palomar · 2004-11-27 19:33:28

Yes, Cindy, an interesting example of how a micro-climate can be influenced by human activity, even to the detriment of that very activity.
These things bother me because I'm a terraformer. Your comments on the micro-climate in Florida, Cindy, certainly give me food for thought about the macro-climate on Mars; and it's not necessarily a particularly palatable snack! You remind me of nagging doubts I've had for some years.
While changing the local climate in Florida may be as simple as draining some waterlands, even massive planetary engineering on Mars to create a benign climate for colonisation may prove to be a futile exercise. It's possible that the very structure of Mars has been a major player in its climatic deterioration in the distant past and will conspire against our terraforming efforts there in the future.
This potential problem has been addressed to some extent in as much as orbiting solettas have been suggested to concentrate solar heating on Mars' north pole. But I've yet to see anything much of what we've learned about terrestrial air and ocean currents being applied to a hypothetical terraformed Mars.
Once we've established a warmer wetter Red Planet, will it be a constant engineering struggle to keep the place from reverting to its old ways?!
???
[Sorry! Rambled on a bit with this one.]

*Hi Shaun: Terrific reply; thanks.

There are some aspects of terraforming which do intrigue me and (believe it or not) I can look at this particular aspect a bit dispassionately. There are times when our efforts to change/redirect/reroute work rather well here on Earth...and then there's times when Mother Nature fights back heartily.

Though I still lean to the Red, it would be fascinating to watch terraforming efforts unfold on Mars. It'd be impossible to view it all in one lifetime, but to see how cause and effect pans out there -- what little surprises, what big nasty surprises, etc.; the consequences (for good or ill)...

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2004-11-27 20:03:24

Cindy:-

It'd be impossible to view it all in one lifetime ...

>Flabber .. Flabber ..< (Sorry, that must have been my gast. )

Far from imagining being able to see all of terraforming on Mars in one lifetime, I'd settle for one teensy weensy little Hab on martian soil before I turn up my toes!!
:;): :laugh:

Palomar · 2004-11-27 22:02:48

Cindy:-
It'd be impossible to view it all in one lifetime ...
>Flabber .. Flabber ..< (Sorry, that must have been my gast. )
Far from imagining being able to see all of terraforming on Mars in one lifetime, I'd settle for one teensy weensy little Hab on martian soil before I turn up my toes!!
:;): :laugh:

:laugh: Me too!

Maybe I should have rephrased that somehow, so as not to sound like an "obvious statement" or something... :;):

--Cindy

RobS · 2004-11-27 22:42:29

Mars will indeed tend to revert. Thickening the atmosphere will greatly increase the tendency of dust storms. When a dust storm hits, the solar heating to the surface drops because the atmosphere is being heated more near the top. As a result, surface temperatures drop quite a lot. Furthermore, once you release significant water into the atmosphere you will get clouds and that will increase Mars's albedo, reflecting more sunlight into space.

It won't be easy.

-- RobS

Shaun Barrett · 2004-11-28 01:39:11

Yes, indeed, Rob. A multiplicity of potential terraforming disasters in the making!

While dust storms are known to cause lower atmospheric cooling, I guess we can only hope that increased levels of water vapour in the air from the newly created seas will act as an atmospheric cleanser, as happens here on earth.
Localised dust storms, some of them no doubt quite large, will probably always occur - especially in the dryer southern reaches, far from water. But I'm hopeful that global monster dust storms will be a thing of the past.
It may be, too, that hardy (genetically engineered?) drought-resistant plants, introduced to the southern highlands, will help to inhibit aeolian erosion and minimise the quantity of raised dust.

While, as you suggest, the increased water vapour in our brand new martian atmosphere will increase global albedo through cloud formation, the resultant cooling will surely be more than offset. Water vapour is the major greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere, without which our global mean temperature would be some 30K lower than it is.
Of course, on a terraformed Mars, with a 500 millibar atmosphere of mainly CO2, and proportionately less ocean surface and less average humidity, the CO2 will be the main influence. But, despite the clouds, I think the overall effect of the extra water vapour will be decidedly in our favour.

Nevertheless, I agree with you Rob that Mars will "tend to revert". Custom-made greenhouse gases like perfluorocarbons will be a constant requirement and I think that soletta will be a must.

Earthfirst · 2004-11-29 15:23:10

I have three Citrus trees, grapefruit, orange trees. Where I live we use to get hard freezes into the 20's 30 years ago, but now we hardly get a few nights at 32. Thats because the city of phoenix and its metro have grown outward, creating a large heat island over the city. This heat island has two effects on weather. One durning the summer high temps are 5 degrees higher than average, summers nights are hot. Average Day temp in June is 114 f low 90, I rember nights when is was midnight and it was still 100 degrees out. In the past it would get up to 104 with low in the 70s, but that is the thing of the past at least for pheonix. Outlining areas still cool down in the summer. One strange effect of the heat island is that Phoenix gets most of its rain at night, most place only rain durning the day because of day time heating. The heat island provides the need convection for rain to start.
In the winter the heat island keeps thing mild, so I can grow tropical and subtropical plants easly. FYI Arizona Citrus is far better than Florida OJ, are weather is cool and dry in the winter which makes the orange extra sweet.
In Florida their tree get blown over by huricanes every fall, hot humid weather make terriable citurs. Florida growers just place a lot of ads on tv, Saying how good their stuff is when it realy is bad! Arizona sweeat oranges are some of the best in the world. I know my two trees produce hunderds of pounds in a season. The oranges are ready to pick in Dec. at christmass, so I get to enjoy all the best oranges in world to eat durning the holydays while you losser in the east have to pay money to eat those alful Florida oranges. It just goes to show you people in the east us what a alful depressing place you live in. Clouddy all day, rain ,snow acid rain, TOAY IS SO WARM AND NICE AND WARM THAT I WILL GO SWIMMING!
Florida you could not pay to make me live their its the armpit of America!
Anys off topic, I read once that the chemistry of ealry mars oceans was differnt than earth sea. On mars the sea were not basic enough for carbonate to exist, so that explains why they found little carbonate rocks on mars. Just because there is no limestone on mars does not mean there was no oceans. For a terraformed mars by keeping the PH of the oceans below the ph need for carbonate to from you dont have to worry about that carbon being lots to the rock, so no plate tetonics are need. If the sea on mars are keep acid than anly co2 will be disolved in the oceans. To get the co2 back from the dead live that falls to the bottem, just durge the muck on to the surface. It is alot easyer than blasting limestone from coral reefs. On mars the only reefs would be in aqueriums.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-11-29 18:28:51

Hi Earthfirst.
Well, I don't know much about growing citrus fruit but your comments about former martian oceans, and any potential oceans created by terraformers in the future, are well taken.

I also read about Mars probably having had mildly acidic oceans in the past, which might explain the apparent scarcity of carbonate rocks on its surface today.
This is potentially good news for terraformers looking to find CO2 reservoirs hidden in the regolith.

People like Drs. McKay and Zubrin have suggested there may be large quantities of carbon dioxide adsorbed onto granules in the martian soil. Estimates have ranged widely, between maybe 100 millibars worth and as much as 800 millibars. This is in addition to the few tens of millibars worth which may exist as solid CO2 at the poles - especially the south pole (though, there have been reports lately that even the south polar cap is more H2O than CO2).
The idea, of course, being that a relatively dense new atmosphere could be created on Mars by the simple expedient of warming the planet, tipping the balance, and producing a runaway greenhouse effect which would release most of that CO2.

What's always bothered me, though, is the possibility that virtually all of Mars' CO2 was turned into carbonate rock early in the piece, leaving little or none readily available to us now for terraforming.
This latest news, that the formation of carbonates in the martian seas was inhibited by a lower than expected pH, makes the prospect that useful amounts of CO2 are still there for terraforming purposes much more likely.

And, if we manage to re-create an Oceanus Borealis and a Hellas Sea, it seems likely these new bodies of water will assume the same mild acidity as the originals. If so, then Earthfirst's suggestion that we won't have to worry about the new atmosphere rapidly disappearing into the ocean is also likely to be true.
Good news all round. :up:

Shaun Barrett · 2004-11-29 18:50:39

Oops!
I just thought of something. There may be a down-side to mildly acidic martian seas.
I've been straining my eyes to find evidence of fossils in the images returned from the MERs. But, if the seas on Mars were acidic, shellfish would probably never have evolved because building and maintaining a shell in that sort of low pH environment would have been impossible.
Shells make great fossils and Earth is full of them. But on Mars, perhaps only soft-bodied creatures like jellyfish may have evolved. And they're notorious for leaving little trace of their existence in the fossil record!

Hmmm. Could shellfish on Mars have used other dissolved chemicals to produce a shell, like sulphates for example?
Do we have any zoologists here?
[I know this is all just the most idle speculation but it's a topic that really interests me. And I really am crazy enough to actually examine the micro-images from Mars for anything reminiscent of a fossil!
]

Earthfirst · 2004-11-29 21:27:22

I am not a animal person, but a plant person. But I do know that on the earth it oceans ph vary greatly, for example earths oceans are really one big one. With currents running from the tropics to the poles on the surface, and cold water sinking at the poles and flowing towards the the tropics. Where the cold water upwells are very productive because cold water hold more o2 than warm and nutreints are sweap off the sea floor that came from the land. These currents are slow and are based on salt conc. and and density.
The PH of the oceans at the poles is mild acid so carbon is in a carbolic not carbonate from, at the upwelling zones and tropics the oh changes to very basic so the carbon srouce is carbonates. So much so that it become supersaturated and marine animals easly precp. it out to from shalls or coral reefs. But have you seen shelled animals in the norths sea, fresh water lakes? Yes of course there are, the animals find another srouce for Ca, and combine it the C to make carbonate for there shells. But not coral, there are no reefs north or south of the tropics of cancer or capircorn, to cold, ph off, and no carbonates. There are softh coral animals though. Another exmaple people live on land there seem to plenty of Ca for there bones other than carbonates.
CaSO4 is a major srource for plants, which we eat and get usable organic Ca to use in this case plants are a intermedate beween minerals and organic Ca. Mineral cycles on mars could be different in many ways depending on what kind of mineral froms of nutrients, like N, P, K is very important to plants. Mars has one big problem wheres all the N, because with out it there will be no life on mars no mater how much we warm it up. Any ways I think the probs should be looking for amoniasulfates, and other salts because to me that is a bigger mystery than why there are no carbonates on mars, wheres the N salts is bigger!
Florida has large sulfate mines and is the main source of rock fertlizer for the us. The condiction that from the evaporate deposites could be a clues to what happened in the drying up of the mars oceans. They found lots of hemite, did they lot for other minerals like phosphate salts that contian N?
Maybe the next probs to mars will look for those minerals.

REB · 2004-11-30 12:37:12

Is there any place on Mars that plant life, be it lichens or whatever, could survive now?

There are ‘Gardens of Eden’s’ on Mars. Places where the climate can, at times, be almost Earthlike. Hellas is one of them, and probably the largest. There are times when pressure gets to where liquid water exists, and temperatures get above freezing.

It would be interesting to try and get something to grow there.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-11-30 20:06:24

Thanks for the brief lesson in zoology, Earthfirst! :up:
Much appreciated.

Sounds like I can go back to staring at the micro-photos for seashells again. :laugh:

Shaun Barrett · 2004-11-30 20:12:08

Nice idea, REB.
I wonder, though, whether the periods of warmth in Hellas are too fleeting for any kind of plant to get a hold there(?).
While there are no doubt times when the pressure is 10 millibars and more, and the temperature as high as 15 or 20 deg.C, at night the place freezes solid like everywhere else on Mars.
We'd need plants that can survive -70 deg.C on a routine basis. ???

SpaceNut · 2004-12-03 14:16:22

Then again maybe an intended one is nature its self in how it will change how things get processed or obsorbed.
Researcher Finds Missing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

A Northeastern University researcher Thursday announced that he has found that the soil below oak trees exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide had significantly higher carbon levels than those exposed to ambient carbon levels.

While this could be used to help create an atmosphere under a dome.

Rxke · 2004-12-10 06:39:21

some lichens might fit the bill...

There are plans to do extensive research for just this stuff, Google for ecopoeisis marsjar moon mars (etc... Can't find the link rightaway, lost my bookmarks, Aaargh...))

They want to build several marsjars, and *a lot* of smaller marsbottles, for schools.
Then seed them and look what happens.
Lather rinse repeat.

srmeaney · 2005-03-18 08:25:30

considering that most of eqatorial Mars is a permafrost glacier consisting of iron oxide which forms due to slightly lower valency energy of chemicaly assisted breakup of H2O by Fe. The energy allows for low temp escape of hydrogen into atmosphere and formation of ironoxide permafrost. Vallis Marineris is simply an equatorial evaporation zone as the planetary glacier becoms two polar glaciers based on the idea that what has already occured took five billion years, The whole process achieving glacial break up will take another eight billion years. It still wont have reached earth like conditions but it will be close. If we terraform, it will be to encourage the conditions for life that isn't human.

It will take a million tonnes of coal a year (for one thousand years) , launched annualy and either dumped into the martian atmosphere or burned on the surface in coal power stations to supply energy to a civilization to melt the CO2 ice cap. This will trigger a massive surge in greenhouse gasses making conditions close to 'switch on' for the initiation of life. Electrical storms, ect. Nitrogen is going to be the other half of the project. We will need to plunder the outer planets for this. That means robotic bulk carriers and orbital gas plants. If we go to Mars, we will be sending 50 people a year as colonist/guardians to proliferate life and monitor the changes we create on Mars.
The rest of us will be building and living on self sustaining space colonies in Solar orbit.

Our job as a species must be to spread the conditions for life across the Universe.

srmeaney · 2005-03-18 08:28:14

also, when we start getting electrcal storms, we will probably want to leave mars. With that much iron oxide the electrical path to ground is going to be through anything taller than a rock.

X · 2007-04-21 19:24:08

*Found this little item at livescience.com:
Citrus Crops Freeze Themselves
November 19: The conversion of Florida swamps to citrus crops over the decades appears to exacerbate freezes that threaten your OJ supply. The logic is simple: Water retains heat better at night than land, so where once there were wetlands, now there's morning frost. NASA and the USGS funded a study of satellite data, released yesterday, that showed the link. "The conversion of the wetlands to agriculture itself could have resulted in or enhanced the severity of recent freezes in some of the agricultural lands of south Florida," said Curtis Marshall of Colorado State University. Image: USDA
*I'm wondering how potential terraforming (on Mars especially or elsewhere) will be able to foresee consequences similar to this example. Of course, anything we learn here can be taken elsewhere.
Will be just one of many, I suppose.
--Cindy

Could we really unintentionally make Mars less hospitable to human life is than it is now? I have to imagine if we were on the path to accidentally blotting out the sun, making the surface molten, or some similarly disastrous scenario we'd see it coming.

Grypd · 2007-04-23 07:06:30

At the present moment of time Mars recieves a lot less light than we do here on Earth and this is even with a very thin atmosphere.

If we terraform and increase that atmosphere that light level will drop a lot and if we also get the regular dust storms lasting a lot longer Mars will cool. Or at least plantlife we put down will find it harder to survive.

We will likely use Soleta arrays to increase the light on Mars and to warm it up so reducing that problem.

But, then we have the problem that as we increase the tempature the perma frost ice may start melting creating real dangers to people crossing the surface and damage to our bases. Think sinkholes and instant floods.

RickSmith · 2007-05-09 00:10:07

Mars will indeed tend to revert. Thickening the atmosphere will greatly increase the tendency of dust storms. ...
Furthermore, once you release significant water into the atmosphere you will get clouds and that will increase Mars's albedo, reflecting more sunlight into space.
It won't be easy.
-- RobS

Hi Rob, everyone.

Actually the dust storms are caused when the CO2 on the south pole sublimes. If we raise the temperature 5 degrees then the CO2 will not form an ice cap and you won't get the wind to kick up the dust storms.

However clouds and snow and ice will certainly reflect more heat back into space. I've been playing around with inventing a Mars game (pun intended) and have been trying to figure out how to model this.

Warm regards, Rick.

RickSmith · 2007-05-09 00:21:39

It will take a million tonnes of coal a year (for one thousand years) , launched annualy and either dumped into the martian atmosphere or burned on the surface in coal power stations to supply energy to a civilization to melt the CO2 ice cap.
Our job as a species must be to spread the conditions for life across the Universe.

Wouldn't it be easier to float a couple of sollettas from Earth to Mars in order to warm its poles? Likewise factories building super greenhouse gasses don't require huge mass transfers from one planet to another.

Warm regards, Rick.

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#1 2004-11-27 08:27:39

Re: Terraformers Take Note - ...(unintended consequences)

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