Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: AGU Advances
Understanding the paleoclimate of Mars is essential for gaining insights into Mars’ early history and atmospheric conditions. Such information is the key to learning why Mars shifted from a potentially warm, wet planet to the cold, dry desert we see now; whether climate change was gradual or catastrophic, thus informing how terrestrial planets evolve over billions of years.
Moreland et al. [2025] use an adapted lake energy balance model to investigate the connections between Martian geology and climate. By combining climate input from the Mars Weather Research & Forecasting general circulation model with geologic constraints from Curiosity rover observations, the study contributes to resolve the historic disconnect between the modeling results that suggest cold climate and the geologic evidence that liquid water was retained into Mars’ lakes. By concluding that relatively small lakes with a relatively limited water input and seasonal ice cover could retain seasonal liquid water for long times under Mars’ paleoclimate, the authors provide groundbreaking findings to inform climate models and enhance our understanding of conditions on early Mars.
Citation: Moreland, E. L., Dee, S. G., Jiang, Y., Bischof, G., Mischna, M. A., Hartigan, N., et al. (2026). Seasonal ice cover could allow liquid lakes to persist in a cold Mars paleoclimate. AGU Advances, 7, e2025AV001891. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001891
—Alberto Montanari, Editor-in-Chief, AGU Advances