Phoenix succumbs to global cooling

NASA thinks that it's Mars probe Phoenix is "almost certainly dead", apparently the victim of "the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter." Via BBC News:

Phoenix's major achievement was in becoming the first mission to Mars to "touch water" in the form of the water-ice it found just centimetres below the topsoil. Chunks of ice were seen to vaporise before the lander's cameras.


Other key results included the identification in the soil of calcium carbonate, which on Earth is a chief component of limestone rock.

Phoenix also detected sheet-like particles, which were probably clays of some kind.

The significance of both minerals is that they form only in the presence of liquid water - which could have supported life.

(...)

Phoenix even recorded snowfall; and took more than 25,000 pictures, from the panoramas of its Arctic landing site to the atomic scale images of dust grains delivered to its microscope.

Phoenix was an historic mission. NASA says that the lander is experiencing temperatures of -100 Deg C. Now that's what I call global cooling!

We have water

NASA Spacecraft Confirms Martian Water, Mission Extended

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Laboratory tests aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander's robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.

"We have water," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."

more here.

Ice

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's descent thrusters have dispersed overlying soil and exposed a harder substrate that appears to be ice.

And where there's ice, there may be organic compounds, a.k.a. "life".

Climate change... on Mars

More evidence that Mars is warming at rate similar to Earth:

Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.

Now, for the really technical answer to what is causing these variations in radiation and temperature click here or here.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

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: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the planet.

Quote of the day

He's an actor, a former U.S Senator from Tennessee (Al Gore's home state) and a potential 2008 Presidential candidate. He's Fred Thompson and he filled in on the Paul Harvey radio show the other day.

He's quoted by the National Review Online:

"Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

"NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.

"This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

"Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.

"Ask Galileo."

Here's a link to the audio.

Solar Irradiance is Heating Both Earth and Mars

Kate Ravilious reports for National Geographic News [emphasis added]:

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.

Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.

"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

Ravilious gives the other side their say, you know the "His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion" stuff, but then at the end of the article, quotes Abdussamatov who makes a very interesting statement:

"The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040," Abdussamatov said. "It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on Earth in 15 to 20 years."

Given that observed global temperatures have been cooling since 1998, I wonder how much traction this statement will get from the mainstream media?