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Hydrothermal plume dynamics on Europa: Implications for chaos formation

Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets American Geophysical Union (AGU) 109:E3 (2004)

Authors:

Jason C Goodman, Geoffrey C Collins, John Marshall, Raymond T Pierrehumbert

Abstract:

Hydrothermal plumes may be responsible for transmitting radiogenic or tidally generated heat from Europa's rocky interior through a liquid ocean to the base of its ice shell. This process has been implicated in the formation of chaos regions and lenticulae by melting or exciting convection in the ice layer. In contrast to earlier work, we argue that Europa's ocean should be treated as an unstratified fluid. We have adapted and expanded upon existing work describing buoyant plumes in a rotating, unstratified environment. We discuss the scaling laws governing the flow and geometry of plumes on Europa and perform a laboratory experiment to obtain scaling constants and to visualize plume behavior in a Europa‐like parameter regime. We predict that hydrothermal plumes on Europa are of a lateral scale (at least 25–50 km) comparable to large chaos regions; they are too broad to be responsible for the formation of individual lenticulae. Plume heat fluxes (0.1–10 W/m2) are too weak to allow complete melt‐through of the ice layer. Current speeds in the plume (3–8 mm/s) are much slower than indicated by previous studies. The observed movement of ice blocks in the Conamara Chaos region is unlikely to be driven by such weak flow.
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An intense stratospheric jet on Jupiter

Nature 427 (2004) 132-135

Authors:

SB Calcutt, Achtergerg, Flasar, Kunde
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Exploring the Saturn System in the Thermal Infrared: The Composite Infrared Spectrometer

Chapter in The Cassini-Huygens Mission, Springer Nature (2004) 169-297

Authors:

FM Flasar, VG Kunde, MM Abbas, RK Achterberg, P Ade, A Barucci, B Bézard, GL Bjoraker, JC Brasunas, S Calcutt, R Carlson, CJ Césarsky, BJ Conrath, A Coradini, R Courtin, A Coustenis, S Edberg, S Edgington, C Ferrari, T Fouchet, D Gautier, PJ Gierasch, K Grossman, P Irwin, DE Jennings, E Lellouch, AA Mamoutkine, A Marten, JP Meyer, CA Nixon, GS Orton, TC Owen, JC Pearl, R Prangé, F Raulin, PL Read, PN Romani, RE Samuelson, ME Segura, MR Showalter, AA Simon-Miller, MD Smith, JR Spencer, LJ Spilker, FW Taylor
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Hydrothermal plume dynamics on Europa: Implications for chaos formation

Journal of Geophysical Research American Geophysical Union (AGU) 109:E3 (2004)

Authors:

Jason C Goodman, Geoffrey C Collins, John Marshall, Raymond T Pierrehumbert
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Retrievals of jovian tropospheric phosphine from Cassini/CIRS

ICARUS 172:1 (2004) 37-49

Authors:

PGJ Irwin, P Parrish, T Fouchet, SB Calcutt, FW Taylor, AA Simon-Miller, CA Nixon
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