A photo from open sources
Mysterious ozone cap at the south pole of Mars arises due to the transfer of oxygen atoms from temperate latitudes and their compound under the cover of polar night into ozone molecules, state scientists in an article in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The red planet, like Earth, has its own the ozone layer. It is three thousand times thinner than the “ultraviolet shield” of our planet, exists only over some parts of Mars and periodically disappears for unknown reasons.
Frank Monmessin and Frank Lefebvre from the Center for Atmosphere, Ecology and space observations in Guiancourt (France) proposed one of possible explanations of how ozone appears and disappears over the south the pole of Mars, having studied the data collected by the French-Russian device SPICAM aboard the Mars Express probe.
By studying the images obtained by the probe during the polar night, scientists discovered a previously unknown “layer” of ozone located on unusually high altitude 40-60 kilometers from the surface of Mars. The existence of this layer puzzled planetologists, and they analyzed the data collected by Mars Express over the past four years, trying to reveal the mechanism of its formation.
To do this, scientists have built a special climate model GCM, describing processes in the atmosphere of the entire Red Planet, and used data from SPICAM to determine the source of ozone. By their calculations, ozone in this layer arises as a result of interaction free oxygen atoms hitting the pole together in the wind from temperate latitudes, with CO2 molecules.
According to planetologists, this process is possible only with lack of rays, as solar ultraviolet will destroy molecules formed in the intermediate stages of the reaction. Not yet it is clear why such a layer does not exist at the north pole of Mars. The authors of the article believe that seasonal differences are the cause of this. in the strength of the so-called meridian winds or concentration water vapor, preventing the appearance of free oxygen atoms in atmosphere.
Mars Ozone Hole
