From the University of Copenhagen – something interesting, but not really surprising. It does make me wonder though about dust and carbon soot related to Earth’s own polar ice cap. – Anthony
On Mars’s poles there are ice caps of ice and dust with layers that reflect to past climate variations on Mars. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have related the layers in the ice cap on Mars’s north pole to variations in solar insolation on Mars, thus established the first dated climate history for Mars, where ice and dust accumulation has been driven by variations in insolation.
The results are published in the scientific journal, Icarus.
The ice caps on Mars’s poles are kilometres thick and composed of ice and dust. There are layers in the ice caps, which can be seen in cliffs and valley slopes and we have known about these layers for decades, since the first satellite images came back from Mars. The layers are believed to reflect past climate on Mars, in the same way that the Earth’s climate history can be read by analysing ice cores from the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica.
Solar insolation on Mars has varied dramatically over time, mainly due to large variations in the tilt of Mars’s rotational axis (obliquity) and this led to dramatic climate variations on Mars. For years people have tried to link the solar insolation and layer formation by looking for signs of periodic sequences in the visible layers, which can be seen in the upper 500 meters. Periodic signals might be traceable back to known variations in the solar insolation on Mars, but so far it has been unclear whether one could find a correlation between variations in insolation and the layers.
Correlation between ice, dust and sun
“Here we have gone in a completely different direction. We have developed a model for how the layers are built up based on fundamental physical processes and it demonstrates a correlation between ice and dust accumulation and solar insolation, explains Christine Hvidberg, a researcher in ice physics at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
She explains that in the model the layer formation is driven by insolation and the dust rich layers can be formed by two processes: 1: Increased evaporation of ice during the summer at high obliquity (when the rotational axis tilts down) and 2: Variations in dust accumulation as a result of variations in the axial tilt. The model is simple, but physically possible and it can be used to examine the relationship between climate variability and layer formation.
The researchers established a framework for the model that could explain the layer formation so that it was consistent with the observations. By comparing the layer distribution in the model with precise measurements of the layer structure from high resolution satellite images of the ice cap on Mars’s north pole, they have discovered that the model is able to reproduce the complex sequences in the layers.
Climate history over 1 million years
“The model dates the upper 500 meters of the northern ice cap on Mars, equivalent to approximately 1 million years and an average accumulation rate of ice and dust of 0.55 mm per year. It links the individual layers to the maxima in solar insolation and thereby establishes a dated climate history of the north pole of Mars over 1 million years,” says Christine Hvidberg.
Even though the model is only based on a comparison with the visible layers in the upper 500 meters, preliminary studies indicate that the entire thickness and internal structure of the ice cap can be explained by the model and can thus explain how ice and dust accumulation on Mars’s north pole has been driven by variations in solar insolation for millions of years.
Article in Icarus
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2012.08.009
h/t to cui bono
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It could be the man-made SUV’s cruising the surface that are causing the catastrophic climate disruption on Mars.
off sarc
Many thanks for h/t Anthony. But I overlapped with PhilW. And, wow, you’re fast!
Just to repeat the sarc I added in T&N:
“Caution! Most of the Martian atmosphere is CO2, and we are now landing cars (sort of) on it, so expect an explosion in temperatures any day now!”
The dominant theory is that Earth’s glacial/interglacial cycles are driven by the equivalent process (Milankovitch cycles); makes sense that Mars would see the same.
We have the substantial advantage of being able to walk up to a glacier and drill it, on earth, to get the history.
I guess it’s models all the way down.
Well since Mars has no creatures with a franchise and politicians trying to control behavior and bureaucrats and scientists with grantmaking power or cravings, it gets to have the sun control its climate.
Truly wonderful.
So we will be able to get a multi million year record of solar variations by drilling an ice core on Mars. Extracting such a core and returning it to Earth for detailed study would be a challenging mission, but eminently justifiable considering the unique insights to be gained.
Oh My Goodness who would have thought that out in the solar system the sun could affect the climate on other planets – but not here on earth (sarc) Now the big question is how do we tax it? with the second queston being who do we tax? Earthlings for discovering this anomoly or Martians for causing it in the first place …. does not really matter so long as someone gets taxed and the coffers are refilled!
GoogleMars is great for looking at the glacial activity on Mars. There are eskers, the internal river deposits left behind once the ice melts, hundreds of miles long at the edge of the south pole. Near the north pole you can see breached pingo-like structures with internal ice. Some of the “bumps” are not breached but are probably ice-cored domes rather than evaporite salt domes that you find on Earth in the Arctic and African deserts.
The ice-caps have to be active as something like 14% of the atmosphere solidifies between summer and winter, but the top of the caps, like central Antarctica and Greenland, are sufficiently below freezing all year that the couple of meters (average) of cap addition and loss each year must stay at the poles: if there was no pole-to-edge ice movement, the atmosphere would eventually disappear, and if the edges of the icecap didn’t keep renewing themselves, the edges would become pitted and ragged as all good stagnant ice does.
Our satellites and landers have been on Mars long enough for the effects of the sun on the planetary atmosphere as it increases and decreases is obvious. Why this observation that the sun’s influence does have a temperature-atmosphere effect at Mars, and therefore should at Earth, does not influence the warmists to pause is ….
… wait, we do understand why this doesn’t happen. Apples and oranges. Mars and Earth. Yesterday and tomorrow. Neither has anything to say about the other. As we are taught in school now about our children and our neighbours, everything in the world is special and unique.
Sometimes I forget good scientific principles. In isolation all things are worthy of unqualified consideration.
The evidence tells a different story to GW.”Fenton’s team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa’s Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker. When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere.”
JustMEinT Musings wonders @ur momisugly September 6, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Oh My Goodness who would have thought that out in the solar system the sun could affect the climate on other planets – but not here on earth (sarc) Now the big question is how do we tax it?
How to tax the Sun? Easy. Require a hat mandate and fine/tax anyone who does not wear a government regulation hat.
Mars 142m miles from the sun. Influenced.
Earth 93m miles. Not so much.
I must not be a climate scientist.
Could someone please provide a good definition of “solar insolation”?
Via Wikipedia: “Insolation is a measure of solar radiation energy received on a given surface area and recorded during a given time.”
OK. The article makes sense now. When we study other weather patterns on other planets physics, math, and reproducibility matter, but down here? Not so much.
How can the fourth planet from the sun have their climate driven by the sun when we, on the third planet, closer to the sun, have coal plants heating the earth instead of the sun? Maybe we could block the sun from heating us at all and just use the ol’ coal plants to warm us up. Maybe use the hot air from the greenies and wind machines to kill the eagles to.
“Here we have gone in a completely different direction. We have developed a model for how the layers are built up based on fundamental physical processes and it demonstrates a correlation between ice and dust accumulation and solar insolation, explains Christine Hvidberg, a researcher in ice physics at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
—————————-
We can’t model our own planet, and we have empirical data.
I’m sure the computer programs will figure it all out, all they need is the correct(ed) data.
Via Wikipedia: “Insolation is a measure of solar radiation energy received on a given surface area and recorded during a given time.”
I’m a bit surprised they refer to ‘solar insolation’. The term is generally used to mean solar irradiance, plus atmospheric effects, resulting in the amount solar irradiance that reaches the surface. As we can’t measure solar insolation at the surface of Mars, nor can we measure Martian atmospheric effects on solar irradiance, we don’t know what the solar insolation is on Mars.
The evidence tells a different story to GW.”Fenton’s team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa’s Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.
I wonder what could cause that, assuming it isn’t a seasonal effect. On Earth you’d immediately think biological processes.
@chris B; Not to worry. Those SUV’s are Chevy Volt designs! LOL
You see the more we learn the more we begin to realise how very little we know.
I have commented before on the unbelievable mixture of arrogance and ignorance of those who suppose that human activity can perceptibly affect the global composition of the atmosphere let alone the vast natural forces that drive the world’s great weather systems.
Of course we alter local weather a little, and regionally maybe but not globally.
As for this absurd chain of supposition of AGW which belongs in the realm of metaphysics rather than natural philosophy is fast falling apart as each link in the chain of speculation is examined and found wanting.
Not least due to the efforts of what in the USA you call citizen scientists, and volunteer observers, and the wonders of the WWW that allows such free communication. I salute them all.
Kindest Regards
It’s not variations in solar output, but variations in Mars axial tilt that they’re attributing these variations in insolation at high Martian latitudes to, and yes, the same effects occur on Earth, just not on the same timescales as AGW.
Isn’t Mars’ atmosphere more than 95% CO2?
If CO2 is a greenhouse gas on Earth, isn’t it a greenhouse gas on Mars?
We are told that a concentration of less than 0.10% (a tiny trace amount) of CO2 in Earth’s atmoshere acts “like a blanket,” or “like the panes of glass in a greenhouse,” to keep the Earth warm.
If such a tiny percentage of CO2 traps head that powerfully on Earth, wouldn’t Mars’ atmosphere of nearly pure CO2 cause heat to mulitiply hundreds of times.
Is there something I’m missing?
Is CO2 actually a “greenhouse gas?”
Thanks.
Who seriously discounts the effect of the sun on the Earth climate? Everything I’ve read indicates there’s no serious debate about forcing from Milankovitch cycles.
And what does this have to do with the present warming? The earth hasn’t measurably tipped on its axis in the past century, and as Tony recently posted, the sun has been getting less active over the past couple decades.
numerobis says:
September 6, 2012 at 5:44 pm
“And what does this have to do with the present warming? The earth hasn’t measurably tipped on its axis in the past century, and as Tony recently posted, the sun has been getting less active over the past couple decades.”
a) Has Mars tipped on its axis?
b) Has Mars a different sun?
Doug Proctor tongue-in-cheek concludes saying —
“Sometimes i forget good scientific principles. In isolation all things are worthy of unqualified consideration.”.
Haha! And, of course, that is the principle underlying “Post Normal Science”!
Science and “Postmodern Science” and “Zen” and “Social Justice” and “Big Green” and “Malthusians” and “control freaks of every variety” and — most important of all — “CHICKEN LITTLE” — should all have an equal voice in deciding political policy.
And one voice equals one vote! And the principles of science that WUWT defends would be lost in the chorus.
Eugene WR Gallun
Andrew W says:
September 6, 2012 at 5:38 pm
It’s not variations in solar output, but variations in Mars axial tilt that they’re attributing these variations in insolation at high Martian latitudes to, and yes, the same effects occur on Earth,
And Andrew is absolutely correct. It is not the ‘sun’ doing it, but variations in the orbital and axial parameters that are driving Mars’ climate [just as they do Earth’s]. Since Mars’ orbit is more eccentric than Earth’s the effect on Mars is greater.
Maybe this report, and a thousand others, should make all of us question NASA-funded scientists.
…Niels Bohr Institute have related the layers in the ice cap on Mars’s north pole to variations in solar insolation on Mars…
——————————————
“solar insolation” is a pleonasm.