Methane making on Mars

摘要

Recent observations of methane on Mars suggest that methane concentrations are locally enhanced and change with season. Methane has a photochemical lifetime of several centuries, however, and it is therefore expected to have a spatially uniform distribution on the planet. Frank Lefevre and Francois Forget use a global climate model of Mars with coupled chemistry to examine the implications of the recently observed variations of Martian methane for our understanding of the chemistry of methane.