Formation of metre-scale bladed roughness on Europa's surface by ablation of ice

On Earth, the sublimation of massive ice deposits at equatorial latitudes under cold and dry conditions in the absence of any liquid melt leads to the formation of spiked and bladed textures eroded into the surface of the ice. These sublimation-sculpted blades are known as penitentes. For this process to take place on another planet, the ice must be sufficiently volatile to sublimate under surface conditions and diffusive processes that act to smooth the topography must operate more slowly. Here we calculate sublimation rates of water ice across the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. We find that surface sublimation rates exceed those of erosion by space weathering processes in Europa’s equatorial belt (latitudes below 23°), and that conditions would favour penitente growth. We estimate that penitentes on Europa could reach 15 m in depth with a spacing of 7.5 m near the equator, on average, if they were to have developed across the interval permitted by Europa’s mean surface age. Although available images of Europa have insufficient resolution to detect surface roughness at the multi-metre scale, radar and thermal data are consistent with our interpretation. We suggest that penitentes could pose a hazard to a future lander on Europa

Evidence of dynamic recrystallization in polar firn

Microstructural analyses have been performed on polar firn from the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica drilling site in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. The results derived from images of the firn structure in microscopic resolution indicate that dynamic recrystallization is active in firn at all depths, and it dominates the evolution of the microstructure when the firn density exceeds a critical value of 730 kg/m3 (overburden snow load ∼0.2 MPa). At the firn-ice transition (density ∼820 kg/m3) the microstructure is characterized by many small grains and bulged or irregularly shaped grain boundaries. More than half of all grains show subgrain boundaries. Thus, strain-induced boundary migration is an essential feature to describe the irregular grain structure. In agreement with previous studies, significant grain growth has been observed with depth for the largest grains in the samples. However, our microscopic analysis reveals that the grain growth with depth in fact vanishes if all grains larger than 65 μm in diameter are taken into account. This result reflects the fact that the growth of the largest grains is counteracted by grain size reduction by shrinking and subdivision of old grains, as well as production of new grains. Consequently, previous conclusions that grain growth in polar firn is essentially analogous to normal grain growth in metallic and ceramic sinters and that the stored strain energy is small in comparison with grain boundary energy can no longer be supported. Additionally, our observations show that the incipience of dynamic recrystallization in polar ice sheets is not as sensitive to temperature as supposed so far. A discussion of the change of the mean grain size due to the measuring technique is imperative

Rapport d'activite scientifique du deuxieme semestre 1980 au premier semestre 1982

SIGLECNRS-CDST / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueFRFranc

The heat budget of the Ross drainage basin

Integration of the thermodynamic equation over an entire drainage basin yields a fairly simple expression for the steady-state heat balance. This stems from the fact that dissipative heating can be calculated directly from the release of gravitational energy. When mass balance, surface temperature and geothermal input are known, the mean ice temperature at the grounding line can be obtained as a residual. The procedure is applied to the drainage basin feeding the Ross Ice Shelf. The resulting mean outlet temperature is -16.2 oC. The heating rates making the balance turn out to be (in 0.0001 K/yr): dissipation 8.2, advective flux divergence -13.5 and geothermal heating 5.3. The method also reveals how the mean outlet temperature depends on mass balance, surface elevation, etc