David R. Marchant

Recent ice ages on Mars

A key pacemaker of ice ages on the Earth is climatic forcing due to variations in planetary orbital parameters. Recent Mars exploration has revealed dusty, water-ice-rich mantling deposits that are layered, metres thick and latitude dependent, occurring in both hemispheres from mid-latitudes to the poles. Here we show evidence that these deposits formed during a geologically recent ice age that occurred from about 2.1 to 0.4 Myr ago. The deposits were emplaced symmetrically down to latitudes of ∼30°—equivalent to Saudi Arabia and the southern United States on the Earth—in response to the changing stability of water ice and dust during variations in obliquity (the angle between Mars pole of rotation and the ecliptic plane) reaching 30–35°. Mars is at present in an ‘interglacial’ period, and the ice-rich deposits are undergoing reworking, degradation and retreat in response to the current instability of near-surface ice. Unlike the Earth, martian ice ages are characterized by warmer polar climates and enhanced equatorward transport of atmospheric water and dust to produce widespread smooth deposits down to mid-latitudes.

Cold-based mountain glaciers on Mars: Western Arsia Mons

Surface environmental conditions on Mars are currently extremely cold and hyperarid, most equivalent to polar deserts on Earth. Coupling newly acquired Mars data with fieldbased observations regarding the flow, surface morphology, and depositional history of polar glaciers in Antarctica, we show that the multiple facies of an extensive fan-shaped deposit on the western flanks of Arsia Mons volcano are consistent with deposition from cold-based mountain glaciers. An outer ridged facies that consists of multiple laterally extensive, arcuate and parallel ridges, resting without disturbance on both well-preserved lava flows and an impact crater, is interpreted as drop moraines formed at the margin of an ablating and predominantly receding cold-based glacier. A knobby facies that consists of equidimensional knobs, each to several kilometers in diameter, is inward of the ridges; this facies is interpreted as a sublimation till derived from in situ downwasting of ashrich glacier ice. A third facies comprising distinctive convex-outward lobes with concentric parallel ridges and aspect ratios elongated downslope likely represents rock-glacier deposits, some of which may still be underlain by a core of glacier ice. Taken together, these surficial deposits show that the western flank of Arsia Mons was occupied by an extensive mountain glacial system accumulating on, and emerging from, the upper slopes of the volcano and spreading downslope to form a piedmont-like fan.