Timescales of the Climate Record in the South Polar Ice Cap of Mars

The South Polar Layered Deposits (SPLD) are the largest water ice reservoirs on Mars. Their accumulation is believed to result from climate oscillations that drive the movement of ice and dust on the surface. The High‐Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging Sy...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Becerra Valdes, Patricio, Sori, Michael M., Thomas, Nicolas, Pommerol, Antoine, Simioni, Emanuele, Sutton, Sarah S., Tulyakov, Stepan, Cremonese, Gabriele
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Geophysical Union 2019
Subjects:
520 Astronomy
620 Engineering
Ice cap
Online Access:https://boris.unibe.ch/132767/1/Becerra_et_al-2019-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
https://boris.unibe.ch/132767/
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Summary:The South Polar Layered Deposits (SPLD) are the largest water ice reservoirs on Mars. Their accumulation is believed to result from climate oscillations that drive the movement of ice and dust on the surface. The High‐Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System have imaged exposures of its internal structure in troughs and marginal scarps. Here we use the stereo imaging products of these instruments to extract stratigraphic profiles representative of various locations throughout the SPLD. Through wavelet and series‐matching analyses of these profiles, we reveal periodicities in the stratigraphy that correlate to the orbital oscillations that drive climate change on Mars and that have been observed to force the accumulation of the north polar cap. We infer that the water ice and dust of the SPLD were deposited at variable rates of 0.13–0.39 mm/year, taking a minimum of 10–30 Myr to accumulate.

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