Cold-Trapping Mars' Atmosphere

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Source: Peter C. Thomas, Science Magazine 

Earth's climate is buffered by massive oceans of liquid water and by gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2).... Mars has no oceans to buffer its temperatures, and the thin atmosphere (95% CO2) provides little thermal buffering.  ...early space probes explored whether large CO2-ice deposits might buffer the atmospheric pressure of Mars (1).  ...Phillips et al. (2) report the discovery of thick deposits in the south polar region that are most likely composed of solid CO2 and comparable in mass to the present Mars atmosphere.

 www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6031/797.summary

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