Lifetime of a transient atmosphere produced by lunar volcanism

Early in the Moon's history volcanic outgassing may have produced a periodic millibar level atmosphere (Needham and Kring 2017). We examined the relevant atmospheric escape processes and lifetime of such an atmosphere. Thermal escape rates were calculated as a function of atmospheric mass for a range of temperatures including the effect of the presence of a light constituent such as H2. Photochemical escape and atmospheric sputtering were calculated using estimates of the higher EUV and plasma fluxes consistent with the early Sun. The often used surface Jeans calculation carried out in Vondrak (1974) is not applicable for the scale and composition of the atmosphere considered. We show that solar driven non-thermal escape can remove an early CO millibar level atmosphere on the order of ~1 Myr if the average exobase temperature is below ~350–400 K. However, if solar UV/EUV absorption heats the upper atmosphere to temperatures > ~ 400 K thermal escape increasingly dominates the loss rate, and we estimated a minimum lifetime of 100's of years considering energy limited escape. •An early Moon CO atmosphere is lost by thermal and non-thermal escape on order of Myrs.•Lifetime of an early Moon atmosphere depends on efficiency of solar EUV heating.•Thermal escape dominates non-thermal escape for atmosphere temperatures >400 K.