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mars2015

Banned

From: Ohio,USA

Registered: 2005-05-16

Posts: 26

Re: Huge Mars Trees and awesome weather - Would Mars' low gravity be interesting?

Here's a couple thoughts I had.  The low gravity would make nature on a terraformed Mars quite interesting.   This is under an assumption of a fully terraformed Mars with a 1 bar atmosphere.  I realize many other options are more likely (say a 600 mb atm) but just for kicks:

First, imagine how tall Sequoia trees could grow!  Perhaps a quarter mile high?

Heres another zinger.  Thunderstorm cells would be enormous!!  They say bc of low gravity, it takes 3 times the air to equal the same density it would on Earth.  Which also means the pressure and temperature gradients as you go up in the atmosphere would be less sharp.  Thunderstorms develop when heated humid air at the ground rises and encounters cooler air below the dewpoint and in severe t-storms can go all the way to the stratosphere where it makes that flat anvil you see at the top of cumulonimbus clouds.  Well, the pressure gradient being smaller would make the stratosphere higher up, would it not?  So-the storms would initially develop slower (and probably more infrequently) due to the smaller temperature gradient-BUT-imagine how high the clouds could get!  In the tropics on Earth they can get to 60,000 feet.  Imagine a 34 mile (180,000 feet) high cumulonimbus cloud!!!  Now, Mars has some wicked weather.  I predict that a future terraformed Mars can have an acceptable climate but some wicked storms will be quite likely.

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Huge Mars Trees and awesome weather - Would Mars' low gravity be interesting?

Heres another zinger.  Thunderstorm cells would be enormous!!  They say bc of low gravity, it takes 3 times the air to equal the same density it would on Earth.  Which also means the pressure and temperature gradients as you go up in the atmosphere would be less sharp.  Thunderstorms develop when heated humid air at the ground rises and encounters cooler air below the dewpoint and in severe t-storms can go all the way to the stratosphere where it makes that flat anvil you see at the top of cumulonimbus clouds.  Well, the pressure gradient being smaller would make the stratosphere higher up, would it not?  So-the storms would initially develop slower (and probably more infrequently) due to the smaller temperature gradient-BUT-imagine how high the clouds could get!  In the tropics on Earth they can get to 60,000 feet.  Imagine a 34 mile (180,000 feet) high cumulonimbus cloud!!!  Now, Mars has some wicked weather.  I predict that a future terraformed Mars can have an acceptable climate but some wicked storms will be quite likely.

*Hi.  I've wondered along those lines as well.  There are some very old posts in equally old threads...long since buried, wherein related/similar matters were discussed.

Am an avid weather watcher besides.  Is oh-so interesting to speculate about. 

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)