Physics
Scientific paper
Sep 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..632s&link_type=abstract
European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a
Physics
Scientific paper
In contrast to Earth, the surface of Mars is not impacted by plate tectonics. Instead the crust and the upper mantel of Mars form a stagnant lid which possibly exists since the planet's formation. Although during this time the surface of Mars has undergone dramatic changes, the basic crustal features (e.g. the crustal dichotomy) remained unaltered. But not only the crustal dichotomy has been in place for billions of years but also more regional crustal variations were formed relatively early. For example, large impact basins exhibit a very thin crust underneath while in volcanic regions like Tharsis or Elysium the crustal thickness is significantly higher than in surrounding areas. These features have not changed much within the last three billion years but so far their influence on the temperature distribution has not been examined. A thicker crust, for example, results in a higher thermal insulation of the underlying mantle as the crustal thermal conductivity is considerably less than the mantle thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity of the crust is assumed to be 2 Wm-1K-1 which is in agreement with data for basaltic material [1] while the average mantle thermal conductivity km is about 3.3 Wm-1K-1 depending on the actual thermal state of the planet as km is temperature- and pressure-dependent [2]. This way, even minor and localized variations in crustal thickness may have a noticeable effect on the temperature distribution.
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