Martian Ground Ice and Equilibrium With Atmospheric Diffusion.

Details Martian Ground Ice and Equilibrium With Atmospheric Diffusion. Martian Ground Ice and Equilibrium With Atmospheric Diffusion.

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufm.p34a..05m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #P34A-05

Physics

0475 Permafrost, Cryosphere, And High-Latitude Processes (0702, 0716), 5405 Atmospheres (0343, 1060), 5422 Ices, 5462 Polar Regions, 6225 Mars

Scientific paper

The leakage neutron flux detected by Mars Odyssey indicates that shallow ground ice is abundant in the martian high-latitude regolith in both northern and southern hemispheres (Boynton et al., 2002; Feldman et al., 2002; Mitrofanov et al., 2002). These data are consistent with ground ice buried beneath a veneer of ice-free soil. Theoretical work over the past decades have predicted ice in roughly these locations based on diffusive exchange of water vapor with the martian atmosphere. Specifically, these numerical models predict that ice-rich soil should occur beneath dry soil where humidity and soil temperature conditions are favorable to ice stability. The response time of this ice to climate changes is on the order of a few hundred to a few thousands of years depending on burial depth and temperature. We conduct detailed analysis of the ice distribution (both in depth and geographically) in comparison between vapor-diffusion theory and neutron observations to shed light on the processes controlling the distribution of the observed ice deposits. We find that the distribution of neutron flux, and thus ice, in both the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars generally agrees with this ice being in diffusive equilibrium with the martian atmosphere. While some areas of disequilibrium occur, they are limited and may be due to local-scale climate affecting stability conditions. Results also indicate that the long term (1000-yr) average humidity in the martian atmosphere was approximately 1.5 to 2 times higher than observed today.

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