A new study conducted by a team of Russian and German scientists has apparently found the real reason behind the odd behavior of water on Mars. During the study, researchers found that there is a giant hole in the Martian atmosphere, and interestingly this hole opens once in every two years, Live Science reports.
Researchers who took part in the study revealed that this hole is venting the limited supply of water to space, and it is also playing a crucial role in dumping the rest of the water on the planet's polar regions.
Several previous researchers had noted that there's water vapor high in the Martian atmosphere, and water used to migrate to the polar regions. However, until now, scientists were pretty unclear about the Martian water cycles, and the real reason why Mars that was once habitable turned to a barren land now.
The study report published in the Geophysical Research Letters revealed that the middle layer of the Martian atmosphere is directly responsible for controlling the water cycle in the Red Planet.
In the study report, researchers also talked about the way in which the water is escaping through the giant hole in the Martian atmosphere.
When it comes to earth, summer in the northern and southern hemisphere is quite similar. But in Mars, things are not the same as earth, since its orbit is much more eccentric. In Mars, summer in the southern hemisphere is much warmer than the summer in the northern hemisphere due to its distance that is significantly closer to the sun.
During these times, a giant window opens in the middle atmosphere of Mars between 60 and 90 kilometers in altitude, and thus water vapor escapes through this vent to the upper atmosphere. As the water reaches the middle atmosphere, some of the water drifts to north and south, where they finally get deposited.
