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Are there any new findings by reliable sources like NASA that are after 2006? Afvasquez ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:47, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
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On the sentence in the introductory paragraph:
When the poles are again exposed to sunlight, the frozen CO2 sublimes, creating enormous winds that sweep off the poles as fast as 400 km/h
citing Hess, S., Tillman, J. (1979) for this claim. Reviewing this paper, I believe the section used as evidence for this claim is as follows (my bolding):
[HO] is, therefore, a minor [atmospheric] constituent, and its condensation and evaporation will differ markedly from that of the major constituent, CO, in several ways.
First, the basic problem of the transfer of HO in an evaporation-condensation cycle from a solid state at one place on the planet to a solid state at another vastly more difficult than the corresponding for CO, since, at the minimum, times as much CO as HO is not removed in a single cycle the ratio becomes correspondingly larger, and an unreasonably strong wind system would be required for the effective transport of water vapor. For example, one might assume, as an extreme upper limit, that during the disappearance of one cap and the growth of the other the entire g of water vapor above each square centimeter of the disappearing cap is transported to the growing cap and deposited there daily as frost. (Such a process would require net north-south winds of about 500 kilometers per hour blowing steadily for perhaps 100 days, combined with complete vertical mixing daily at each end.)
I believe this passage has been misinterpreted in several ways. My interpretation is that this is a "mental model," so to speak, about the upper end of energy/wind needed to transfer some volatile from one pole to the other. Second, the wind speed quoted here refers to the wind needed to transfer the full amount of Mars' evaporated water in a pole to the other pole. While this does have to do with the sublimation of a volatile, its not the sublimation itself that causes the wind, just that this is the amount of wind needed to explain the mental model.
I hope I've been clear in my explanation. Thanks
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Martian polar ice caps. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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"when one hemisphere experiences winter, approximately 3 trillion to 4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide freezes out of the atmosphere onto the northern and southern polar caps" Is this correct? Wouldn't the other hemisphere be in summer?-- 2607:FEA8:D5DF:F945:8C09:818D:3BA8:8AAE ( talk) 23:28, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
While it is premature to rewrite this Wikipedia entry now, this AGU research letter posits that smectite clays are a better explanation than buried salty ice for radar returns from the Martian south pole. The north pole isn't mentioned in this study, subsequent studies may.
Wikipedia should not "take sides" before more scientists weigh in. However, if the controversy persists, the Wikipedia entry should acknowledge the dispute. Many of us want Mars to have lots of water ice, but that doesn't mean it is actually there.
Referred to by these news reports:
KeithLofstrom ( talk) 20:46, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
The statement... "The extra sunlight causes the ice to melt, so much so that it could cover parts of the surface in 10 m of ice"... does not make sense. How much of the surface is "parts"? I suspect that it should say either "... would cover the entire Martian surface in 10m of ice", or perhaps "... the entire northern hemisphere in 10m of ice. Given the dimensions of the northern ice cap, both seem reasonable. At least I try ( talk) 16:24, 14 August 2021 (UTC)