A group of Italian scientists, has solved the mystery about the strange location of the residual ice layer in the South Pole of the red planet, being based on the data of the Mars Express sounding, according to has informed the European Space Agency (THAT, in English) in an official notice.

Like the Earth, Mars has layers frozen in its poles, but unlike the blue planet, those layers are done of carbon dioxide frozen besides water. During the summer in the South hemisphere, great part of this ice layer is sublimated, a process which the ice becomes gas, leaving behind himself what is called the residual polar layer. For the experts, the problem resides in which, while the winter layer is around the South Pole, the residual layer is displaced about three or four degrees.

This descolocación that has been strange to the astrophisicists during years, in fact was solved in the 2005 but now, thanks to the work of Mars Express, they come to the light new data that explain the phenomenon.

Planetary Espectómetro of Fourier

Professor Marco Giuranna of the Istituto I gave to Physics dello Interplanetary Spazio CNR (IFSI) of Rome (Italy) and their equipment has used the Planetary Espectómetro of Fourier installed in the sounding to measure the temperature of the Martian atmosphere from the ground to an altitude of 50 kilometers on the polar surface in the south of the planet.

During the equivalent to a little more a year in Mars, the team of experts used the profiles provided by the apparatus to follow the way in which the atmosphere changed its temperature. They monitored the way in which carbon dioxide is gotten up to the ice layer when the autumn takes passage to the winter in the red planet. We detected two climatic systems in the region that were throughout developed from mid autumn and the winter, there is this Giuranna.

Those climatic systems derive from the strong winds of component this that characterize the atmospheric circulation in the average latitudes of the planet, that when hitting the walls of the base of Hellas - the greatest crater of the planet gives rise to the denominated waves of Rossby. These redirigen winds of the highest latitudes and move the climatic center towards the South Pole, where a system of low pressures in the area nearest the hemisphere is created the west of the planet, whereas in most Eastern they dominate the high pressures.

Two different mechanisms

Giuranna and its equipment are shortage that the temperature in the zone of low pressures is under the condensation of carbon dioxide, so that the condensate gas falls of the sky as snow and is gotten up to the ground as it freezes. On the contrary, in the region of high pressure this almost never happens, since the conditions never are appropriate for the nine, so only there is frost.

The snow-covered areas are not sublimated during the summer since they reflect to the space more light than the surfaces with frost. The frost flakes tend to be greater and rough than those of snow reason why they catch more solar light and they facilitate the sublimation process. The zone the west of the polar layer more meridional, done of frost and snow, not only contains a greater amount of frozen carbon dioxide but they are sublimated more slowly during the summer, whereas the Eastern area done only of frost disappears completely. This explains why the residual layer is not located symmetrically around the Mars South Pole, concludes Giuranna.

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