LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Arousing greenhouse effect in the Martian atmosphere could raise the planet's temperature enough to melt its polar ice caps and create conditions suitable for life,US scientists said Thursday.

    In the February issue of Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, a team of researchers led by Margarita Marinova at the NASA Ames Research Center suggested that introducing global warming on Mars may be the best approach for warming the planet's frozen landscape and turning it into a habitable world in the future.

    The same types of atmospheric interactions that have led to recent surface temperature warming trends on Earth could be harnessed on Mars to create another biologically hospitable environment in the solar system, they said.

    "Bringing life to Mars and studying its growth would contributeto our understanding of evolution, and the ability of life to adapt and proliferate on other worlds," Marinova said.

    "Since warming Mars effectively reverts it to its past, more habitable state, this would give any possibly dormant life on Marsthe chance to be revived and develop further," the scientist explained.

    Scientists noted that artificially created gases nearly 10,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide could be manufactured to have minimal detrimental effects on living organisms and the ozonelayer while retaining an exceptionally long lifespan in the environment.

    Then they created a computer model of the Martian atmosphere and analyzed four such gases, individually and in combination, that are considered the best candidates for the job.

    Their study focused on fluorine-based gases, composed of elements readily available on the Martian surface that are known to be effective at absorbing thermal infrared energy.

    They found that a compound known as octafluoropropane, whose chemical formula is C3F8, produced the greatest warming, while itscombination with several similar gases enhanced the warming effecteven further.

    They anticipated that adding approximately 300 parts per million (ppm) of the gas mixture in the current Martian atmosphere,which is the equivalent of nearly two ppm in an Earth-like atmosphere, would spark a runaway greenhouse effect, creating an instability in the polar ice sheets that would slowly evaporate the frozen carbon dioxide on the planet's surface.

    Then the release of increasing amounts of carbon dioxide would lead to further melting and global temperature increases that could enhance atmospheric pressure and eventually restore a thicker atmosphere to the planet, researchers said.

    Such a process could take centuries or even millennia to complete but, because the raw materials for the fluorine gases already exist on Mars, it is possible that astronauts could createthem on a manned mission to the planet. It would otherwise be impossible to deliver gigaton-sized quantities of the gas to Mars.

    The authors concluded that introducing powerful greenhouse gases is the most feasible technique for raising the temperature and increasing the atmospheric pressure on Mars, particularly whencompared with other alternatives like sprinkling sunlight-absorbing dust on the poles or placing large mirrors in the planet's orbit. Enditem