The Moon as a Long-Term Atmospheric Archive of Earth: Field-Mediated Ion Transfer and Epistemic Implications

Recent studies in space plasma physics and lunar science demonstrate that ionized particles escaping from Earth’s upper atmosphere can be transported toward the Moon via Earth’s magnetotail, particularly during full Moon phases. These terrestrial atmospheric ions, including oxygen and nitrogen species, become implanted into the lunar regolith, where they may remain preserved over geological timescales. Building on recent observational and modeling work—most notably Paramanick et al. (2025)—this preprint argues that the Moon functions as a long-term atmospheric archive of Earth rather than a transient sink for atmospheric loss. While the net ion flux is negligible with respect to Earth’s atmospheric budget, its cumulative effect is epistemically significant for reconstructing Earth’s atmospheric and magnetospheric evolution. By synthesizing existing mission data (e.g., Kaguya, ARTEMIS) and established theoretical frameworks, this work frames the lunar regolith as a uniquely stable planetary record, largely unaffected by terrestrial geological recycling. A brief interpretive note is included to contextualize the process in terms of regime-dependent interaction dominance, without proposing new fundamental forces. The Moon thus emerges as a planetary-scale recorder of Earth’s atmospheric history, offering insights inaccessible through terrestrial archives alone.