The Importance of Isentropic Mixing in the Formation of the Martian Polar Layered Deposits

Abstract

Layers of ice and dust at the poles of Mars reflect variations in orbital parameters and atmospheric processes throughout the planet's history and may provide a key to understanding Mars's climate record. Previous research has investigated transport changes into the polar regions and found a nonlinear response to obliquity that suggests that Mars may currently be experiencing a maximum in transport across the winter poles. The thickness and composition of layers within the polar layered deposits (PLDs) are likely influenced by changes in horizontal atmospheric mixing at the poles, which is an important component of the transport of aerosols and chemical tracers. No study has yet investigated horizontal mixing alone, which may be influenced by polar vortex morphology. We show that mixing in an idealized Martian global climate model varies significantly with obliquity and dust abundance by using a diagnostic called effective diffusivity, which has been used to study the stratospheric polar vortices on Earth and to understand their role as a mixing barrier but has not been applied to Mars's polar vortices. We find that mixing in the winter southern hemisphere doubles with either an octupling of dust loading or an increase in obliquity from 10° to 50°. We find a weaker response to changing dust loading or obliquity in the northern hemisphere. We demonstrate that horizontal mixing is an important component of transport into Mars’s polar regions, may contribute to the formation of the PLDs, and presents effective diffusivity as a useful method to understand mixing in the Martian atmosphere.