A weak avalanche season on Mars?
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image from Mars is cool both for what is visible in the photo and for what is not, the latter of which might turn out to be a discovery of importance.
The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 24, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a section of the edge of Mars’ north polar ice cap, with north at the top.
This scarp is probably more than 2,000 feet high, though that height drops to the south as the upper layers disappear one by one from either long term erosion or sublimation. Those layers represent the visible information in the photo that is cool. They give us tantalizing clues about the geological and climatic history of Mars. Each layer probably represents a climate period when the north icecap was growing because the tilt of the planet’s rotation was even less than the 25 degrees it is now. When that tilt is small, as small as 11 degrees, the poles of Mars are very cold, and water ice migrates from the mid-latitudes to the poles, adding thickness to the icecaps. When the tilt grows, to as much as 55 degrees, the mid-latitudes are colder than the poles, and the water ice migrates back to the mid-latitudes.
What is not visible in this picture, however, might be far more significant.
The overview map to the right indicates this scarp’s location with the black cross, at the end of the canyon dubbed Chasma Boreale.
When this picture was taken it was springtime at the north pole. The Sun had finally peeked over the horizon, and begun warming the cliff face. In the past six or so Martian years, images from MRO have photographed hundreds of avalanches resulting from that warming, so many that the camera routinely captured events, as they happened.
Not this spring. In new images coming from MRO during the last few months there have been numerous icecap scarp photographs like today’s, taken of many different places, all designed to monitor the scarp for avalanches. Unlike past springs, however, in looking at these many images I have not been able to find any avalanches.
Obviously I could be missing them. I emailed Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona, who is involved in that monitoring, and asked him if my impression was wrong. It was not. As he wrote,
There have been fewer avalanches this year. To figure out how much fewer an analysis has to be done on how many kilometers of scarp were imaged in that season.
At the moment no one has completed that analysis, so no one knows exactly how much the count of avalanches has dropped, compared to past seasons. And if it has dropped, then that is a mystery that needs explanation. The change could simply be a random fluctuation, or it could be caused by some phenomenon that we as yet do not recognize. In order to gain a real understanding of Mars’ climate and seasonal changes this question needs answering..
The analysis required to do that however is likely not going to be done for awhile, There is so much new data arriving from Mars that there isn’t enough time to follow up every mystery, immediately As Bryne noted,
We’ll likely pick this up for the next extended mission proposal in an effort to explain why some years are different than others. Until then (next Spring) it might not get followed up on.
In other words, this mystery provides the MRO science team an additional reason to get NASA to extend the orbiter’s mission.
Of course, if some graduate student studying to become a planetary scientist needed a project now, I am sure their advisor would have no objections if they chose this one. Anyone interested?
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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Click for full image.
Today’s cool image from Mars is cool both for what is visible in the photo and for what is not, the latter of which might turn out to be a discovery of importance.
The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 24, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a section of the edge of Mars’ north polar ice cap, with north at the top.
This scarp is probably more than 2,000 feet high, though that height drops to the south as the upper layers disappear one by one from either long term erosion or sublimation. Those layers represent the visible information in the photo that is cool. They give us tantalizing clues about the geological and climatic history of Mars. Each layer probably represents a climate period when the north icecap was growing because the tilt of the planet’s rotation was even less than the 25 degrees it is now. When that tilt is small, as small as 11 degrees, the poles of Mars are very cold, and water ice migrates from the mid-latitudes to the poles, adding thickness to the icecaps. When the tilt grows, to as much as 55 degrees, the mid-latitudes are colder than the poles, and the water ice migrates back to the mid-latitudes.
What is not visible in this picture, however, might be far more significant.
The overview map to the right indicates this scarp’s location with the black cross, at the end of the canyon dubbed Chasma Boreale.
When this picture was taken it was springtime at the north pole. The Sun had finally peeked over the horizon, and begun warming the cliff face. In the past six or so Martian years, images from MRO have photographed hundreds of avalanches resulting from that warming, so many that the camera routinely captured events, as they happened.
Not this spring. In new images coming from MRO during the last few months there have been numerous icecap scarp photographs like today’s, taken of many different places, all designed to monitor the scarp for avalanches. Unlike past springs, however, in looking at these many images I have not been able to find any avalanches.
Obviously I could be missing them. I emailed Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona, who is involved in that monitoring, and asked him if my impression was wrong. It was not. As he wrote,
There have been fewer avalanches this year. To figure out how much fewer an analysis has to be done on how many kilometers of scarp were imaged in that season.
At the moment no one has completed that analysis, so no one knows exactly how much the count of avalanches has dropped, compared to past seasons. And if it has dropped, then that is a mystery that needs explanation. The change could simply be a random fluctuation, or it could be caused by some phenomenon that we as yet do not recognize. In order to gain a real understanding of Mars’ climate and seasonal changes this question needs answering..
The analysis required to do that however is likely not going to be done for awhile, There is so much new data arriving from Mars that there isn’t enough time to follow up every mystery, immediately As Bryne noted,
We’ll likely pick this up for the next extended mission proposal in an effort to explain why some years are different than others. Until then (next Spring) it might not get followed up on.
In other words, this mystery provides the MRO science team an additional reason to get NASA to extend the orbiter’s mission.
Of course, if some graduate student studying to become a planetary scientist needed a project now, I am sure their advisor would have no objections if they chose this one. Anyone interested?
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
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