Houston Daily

Researchers at the University of Houston have made significant progress in understanding Mars' climate. Larry Guan, a graduate student in the Department of Physics, led a team that produced the first meridional profile of energy flow on Mars, an achievement described in their recent publication, “Distinct Energy Budgets of Mars and Earth,” in the journal AGU Advances. The study will also be featured in Eos magazine.

Guan's research was conducted with support from advisers Liming Li from the Department of Physics and Xun Jiang from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, as well as collaboration with planetary scientists from other institutions. Data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter was used to observe how energy enters and leaves different latitudes on Mars during various seasons.

“Our research improves upon a concept that was already well-known,” Guan says. “Energy budget studies are not new; we’re just the first to do it on a more granular time and space scale. Hopefully, we can use these numbers to improve Martian climate models.”

The findings highlight differences between Earth's and Mars' atmospheric energy budgets. On Earth, there is an energy surplus at the tropics and a deficit at the poles; on Mars, this pattern is reversed. The Martian atmosphere is influenced by planet-wide dust storms and large polar ice caps made of solid carbon dioxide.

Guan credited his advisers for their guidance and acknowledged contributions from former UH graduate student Ellen Creecy and officemate Xinyue Wang. He noted that they often covered for each other's academic presentations when needed.

Other contributors included Anthony Toigo (Johns Hopkins University), Mark Richardson (Aeolis Research), Yeon Joo Lee (Institute for Basic Science, South Korea), Agustín Sánchez-Lavega (Universidad del País Vasco, Spain), and Germán Martínez (Lunar and Planetary Institute). Martínez played a key role in reviewing scientific arguments within the study.

According to Guan, one challenge was demonstrating what made their results novel compared to previous work: “It took a lot of consultation with external collaborators — hundreds of quite tedious back-and-forth email exchanges — that ultimately made the paper marketable and got it across the finish line,” he says.

After completing his dissertation and publishing this study, Guan plans to take time off before pursuing further research interests. “I’m taking a year off,” he says. “Maybe I’ll learn to fly a plane or something."