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Updated – September 05, 2026 02:52 pm IST – KOZHIKODE
Valles Marineris stretches more than 4,000 km across Mars’s equatorial region and is thought to have once contained extensive bodies of water, including paleolakes. Researchers estimate that these waterbodies contained about 2,369 trillion cubic metres, with simulations suggesting that roughly half was released during the catastrophic breach.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The recent catastrophic flash floods in Nepal, apparently triggered by the collapse of a glacier rock mass that sent ice, rock, and sediment downstream, causing a sudden surge of water and debris in the river, highlight the destructive power of such events.
A vastly larger outburst flood occurred on Mars during the Late Hesperian to Early Amazonian, when the breaching of paleolakes in Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system in the Solar System, unleashed a massive deluge. The flood, which originated in the ancient canyon system, is estimated to have released 1,245 trillion cubic metres of water and may have raised the global mean level of the hypothesised ancient Martian ocean by about 34 metres, according to a new study published online in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus.
The researchers estimate that an equivalent discharge on Earth would have inundated about 3.6 million sq km of land.
