The slowly disappearing dry ice cap at Mars’ south pole
Click for the 2020 full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right of two images taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was posted as a captioned image by the orbiter’s science team today.
This crater, dubbed the Happy Face Crater because of the shape of the blobby features within it, is located on the south pole ice cap of Mars, about 200 miles from the south pole itself.
Today’s caption noted how these pictures, taken nine years apart, illustrate the change going on at the Martian south pole.
The “blobby” features in the polar cap are due to the sun sublimating away the carbon dioxide into these round patterns. You can see how nine years of this thermal erosion have made the “mouth” of the face larger. The “nose” consisted of a two circular depressions in 2011, and in 2020, those two depressions have grown larger and merged.
While this caption noted the importance of studying these long term changes in order to understand the evolution of Mars’ climate and geology, it did not give the very specific discovery these changes suggest for Mars globally, a discovery that is actually very significant.
The two ice caps of Mars have some fundamental differences, all presently unexplained. The similarities are obvious. Both have permanent caps of water ice that are presently believed to be in a steady state, not shrinking or growing. Both each winter get covered by a thin mantle of dry ice that sublimates away completely with the coming of spring.
The differences are more puzzling, as shown by the maps of the two poles below.
In the north, shown first on the right, the permanent pure water ice cap is mostly indicated by the green areas. Beyond this cap a vast sea of sand dunes surrounds the cap.
The south pole, shown in the second map to the right, is more complicated. First, the permanent pure water ice cap is smaller, as indicated by the areas of blue and white. Second, there are no sand dune seas. Third, that smaller water ice cap sits on top of a much larger cap of mixed dirt, debris, and ice, dubbed the layered deposits. In the north such a layer doesn’t exist, or if it does exist under the pure ice cap, it doesn’t extend much beyond it, as it does in the south.
The most significant difference between the two poles however is the presence in the south of a small permanent cap of dry ice, laying on top of the pure water ice and indicated in white. At the north pole there is no permanent dry ice cap, just the seasonal dry ice mantle that comes and goes with the seasons.
Why does the south pole have a permanent cap of carbon dioxide? How is it that frozen carbon dioxide can survive year round in the south but not in the north? The answers to these questions remain a mystery, but the changes shown in Happy Face Crater (its location indicated by the red cross) over about five Martian years reveal something important about that permanent CO2 ice cap: It appears to be going away.
The changes suggest a steady and slow sublimation and decay of that permanent cap of frozen CO2 across seasons. As the two pictures only cover a few Martian years, these changes don’t really tell us the long term rate of decay. Furthermore, the time period is so short there is uncertainty whether this trend is permanent or merely a short term fluctuation.
Regardless, this permanent carbon dioxide ice cap might exist in the south, but the climate conditions on Mars presently do not appear favorable to it, and these two photos demonstrate that it is presently not in steady state, as are the water ice caps, but is at this time slowly getting smaller from year to year.
The shrinking of this permanent carbon dioxide cap means that the atmosphere of Mars is right now gaining CO2 (just like the Earth!). How this will change that Martian atmosphere and the red planet’s overall climate is not known. Moreover, we will likely not know for quite awhile, because we simply don’t have enough information to put together a reasonably accurate model of the Martian atmosphere. The climate models that exist for Earth’s climate continue to do a poor job of predicting the changes in our home planet’s global climate, and we know far less about Mars.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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.
Click for the 2020 full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right of two images taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was posted as a captioned image by the orbiter’s science team today.
This crater, dubbed the Happy Face Crater because of the shape of the blobby features within it, is located on the south pole ice cap of Mars, about 200 miles from the south pole itself.
Today’s caption noted how these pictures, taken nine years apart, illustrate the change going on at the Martian south pole.
The “blobby” features in the polar cap are due to the sun sublimating away the carbon dioxide into these round patterns. You can see how nine years of this thermal erosion have made the “mouth” of the face larger. The “nose” consisted of a two circular depressions in 2011, and in 2020, those two depressions have grown larger and merged.
While this caption noted the importance of studying these long term changes in order to understand the evolution of Mars’ climate and geology, it did not give the very specific discovery these changes suggest for Mars globally, a discovery that is actually very significant.
The two ice caps of Mars have some fundamental differences, all presently unexplained. The similarities are obvious. Both have permanent caps of water ice that are presently believed to be in a steady state, not shrinking or growing. Both each winter get covered by a thin mantle of dry ice that sublimates away completely with the coming of spring.
The differences are more puzzling, as shown by the maps of the two poles below.
In the north, shown first on the right, the permanent pure water ice cap is mostly indicated by the green areas. Beyond this cap a vast sea of sand dunes surrounds the cap.
The south pole, shown in the second map to the right, is more complicated. First, the permanent pure water ice cap is smaller, as indicated by the areas of blue and white. Second, there are no sand dune seas. Third, that smaller water ice cap sits on top of a much larger cap of mixed dirt, debris, and ice, dubbed the layered deposits. In the north such a layer doesn’t exist, or if it does exist under the pure ice cap, it doesn’t extend much beyond it, as it does in the south.
The most significant difference between the two poles however is the presence in the south of a small permanent cap of dry ice, laying on top of the pure water ice and indicated in white. At the north pole there is no permanent dry ice cap, just the seasonal dry ice mantle that comes and goes with the seasons.
Why does the south pole have a permanent cap of carbon dioxide? How is it that frozen carbon dioxide can survive year round in the south but not in the north? The answers to these questions remain a mystery, but the changes shown in Happy Face Crater (its location indicated by the red cross) over about five Martian years reveal something important about that permanent CO2 ice cap: It appears to be going away.
The changes suggest a steady and slow sublimation and decay of that permanent cap of frozen CO2 across seasons. As the two pictures only cover a few Martian years, these changes don’t really tell us the long term rate of decay. Furthermore, the time period is so short there is uncertainty whether this trend is permanent or merely a short term fluctuation.
Regardless, this permanent carbon dioxide ice cap might exist in the south, but the climate conditions on Mars presently do not appear favorable to it, and these two photos demonstrate that it is presently not in steady state, as are the water ice caps, but is at this time slowly getting smaller from year to year.
The shrinking of this permanent carbon dioxide cap means that the atmosphere of Mars is right now gaining CO2 (just like the Earth!). How this will change that Martian atmosphere and the red planet’s overall climate is not known. Moreover, we will likely not know for quite awhile, because we simply don’t have enough information to put together a reasonably accurate model of the Martian atmosphere. The climate models that exist for Earth’s climate continue to do a poor job of predicting the changes in our home planet’s global climate, and we know far less about Mars.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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.
OMG!!!! We need a new green deal for Mars and a carbon tax.
The solution is clear… send Greta T, Algore, and AOC to Mars! Only they can prevent climate change from ruining Mars before we can get there and do it ourselves!
Actually, I think this information needs to be explored in depth. If Mars is warming in a somewhat similar fashion as Earth, then the anthropological caused global warming should take a credibility hit. The idea being that natural cycles of planet and sun might tell the whole story.
Actually, I think this information needs to be explored in depth. If Mars is warming in a somewhat similar fashion as Earth, then the anthropological caused global warming should take a credibility hit. The idea being that natural cycles of planet and sun might tell the whole story.
That’s why they will blame our rovers as the cause.
The oil industry is to be blamed. Too much Rover traffic on Mars, as said here. Only Gresus T. Christ can save Mars now eat bugs, it helps.
@John Hate “Then the anthropological caused global warming should take a credibility hit. ”
:-D
That’s funniest I’ve seen since the DRNK style inauguration of Bunker Biden!
“Build Back Mars Better”
‘A Princess of Mars,’
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Chapter 20: “Inside the Atmosphere Factory”
https://youtu.be/nLyeKCuD2wQ
18:05
Why are we worrying about Mars? Aren’t there enough problems on this planet?