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Y. Abe, Y. Kobayashi (DEPP, Univ. Tokyo), A. Numaguchi (CCSR, Univ. Tokyo)
Many fluival feaures on Mars indicate that the water circulation on Mars in the past was drastically different from that of today. The formation of valley networks requires replenishment of water into their source areas. We examined here the atmospheric hydrodologic cycle on paleo-Mars using a general circulation model. We explored here the difference of the water circulation between a hypothetical land-planet, which has no ocean on its surface, and an aqua-planet, which has water ocean. It was shown that on a land planet water is transported poleward in the atmosphere. As a result, low latitude areas of the land-planet are dried and no precipitation is observed. In other words, no replenishment of water occured at the low-latitude areas, which is contradictory with valley networks at low-latitude areas. This suggests that a simple picture of warm land-planet may not be applicable to paleo-Mars.