What is the coldest temperature on Mars. The temperature on Mars is a cold mystery. Why then did the spring warmth surprise the Spaniards?

If you are going to take a vacation on another planet, then it is important to know about possible climate changes :) But seriously, many people know that most planets in our solar system have extreme temperatures that are not suitable for a quiet life. But what exactly are the temperatures on the surface of these planets? Below I offer a small overview of the temperatures of the planets in the solar system.

Mercury

Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, so one might assume that it is constantly burning like a furnace. However, while the temperature on Mercury can reach 427°C, it can also drop as low as -173°C. Mercury has such a large temperature difference because it has no atmosphere.

Venus

Venus, the second closest planet to the Sun, has the highest average temperatures of any planet in our solar system, regularly reaching 460°C. Venus is so hot because of its proximity to the Sun and its dense atmosphere. The atmosphere of Venus consists of dense clouds containing carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. This creates a strong greenhouse effect that traps the sun's heat in the atmosphere and turns the planet into a furnace.

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and so far the only planet known for its ability to support life. The average temperature on Earth is 7.2°C, but it varies by large deviations from this indicator. The highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 70.7°C in Iran. The lowest temperature was , and it reaches -91.2°C.

Mars

Mars is cold because, firstly, it does not have an atmosphere to maintain high temperature, and secondly, it is relatively far from the Sun. Since Mars has an elliptical orbit (it gets much closer to the Sun at some points in its orbit), during the summer its temperature can deviate up to 30°C from the norm in the northern and southern hemispheres. The minimum temperature on Mars is approximately -140°C and the highest is 20°C.

Jupiter

Jupiter doesn't have any solid surface, since it's a gas giant, so it doesn't have any surface temperature either. At the top of Jupiter's clouds, temperatures are around -145°C. As you descend closer to the center of the planet, the temperature increases. At a point where the atmospheric pressure is ten times that of Earth, the temperature is 21°C, which some scientists jokingly refer to as "room temperature." In the core of the planet, the temperature is much higher and reaches approximately 24,000°C. For comparison, it is worth noting that the core of Jupiter is hotter than the surface of the Sun.

Saturn

As with Jupiter, the temperature in Saturn's upper atmosphere remains very low - down to about -175°C - and increases as you get closer to the center of the planet (up to 11,700°C at the core). Saturn, in fact, generates heat itself. It generates 2.5 times more energy than it receives from the Sun.

Uranus

Uranus is the coldest planet with the lowest recorded temperature of -224°C. Although Uranus is far from the Sun, this is not the only reason for its low temperature. All other gas giants in our solar system emit more heat from their cores than they receive from the sun. Uranus has a core with a temperature of approximately 4737°C, which is only one-fifth the temperature of Jupiter's core.

Neptune

With temperatures as low as -218°C in Neptune's upper atmosphere, this planet is one of the coldest in our solar system. Like the gas giants, Neptune has a much hotter core that is around 7000°C.

Below is a graph showing planetary temperatures in both Fahrenheit (°F) and Celsius (°C). Please note that Pluto has not been classified as a planet since 2006 (see below).

Mars- this is a harsh, cold world, the conditions on which are very different from those familiar to us. Despite the fact that the Sun (when viewed from the surface of Mars) seems to be only slightly smaller here than when observed from the Earth, in fact Mars is at a distance from it, that is, much further than our planet (149.5 million km .). Accordingly, this planet gets a quarter less solar energy than the Earth.

However, the distance from the Sun is only one of the reasons why the planet Mars is a cold planet. The second reason is that it is too thin, consisting of 95% carbon dioxide, and unable to retain enough heat.

Why is the atmosphere so important? Because for our (and any other) planet, it serves as a kind of "thermal underwear" or "blanket" that prevents the surface from cooling too quickly. Now imagine that if on Earth, with its very dense atmosphere, in winter, the temperature drops in some regions to -50-70 degrees Celsius, how cold it must be on Mars, whose blanket-atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth!

Snow on Mars is a landscape as seen by one of the rovers on the surface of the red planet. To be honest, in Yakutia I saw exactly the same landscapes

Temperature on Mars day and night

So, Mars is a lifeless and cold planet, because of the thin atmosphere, it is completely deprived of the chance to ever “warm up”. However, what temperature is usually observed in Martian conditions?

Average temperature on Mars is something around minus 60 degrees Celsius. So that you understand how cold it is, then here's food for thought: on Earth, the average temperature is +14.8 degrees, so yes, Mars is very, very "cool". In winter, near the poles, the temperature on Mars can drop to -125 degrees Celsius, regardless of the time of day. On a summer day, near the equator, the planet is relatively warm: up to +20 degrees, but at night the thermometer will again fall to -73. You can't say anything - the conditions are just extreme!

As temperatures drop, particles of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere freeze and fall out as frost, covering the surface and rocks of the planet like snow. Martian "snow" bears little resemblance to Earth's, because its snowflakes do not exceed the size of erythrocyte cells in human blood. Rather, such "snow" resembles a discharged fog that settles on the surface of the planet as it freezes. However, as soon as the Martian morning comes, and the atmosphere of the planet begins to warm up, carbon dioxide will again turn into a volatile compound, and again cover everything around with white fog until it completely evaporates.

The ice caps of Mars in a good telescope are visible even from the ground

Seasons (seasons) on Mars

Like our planet, the axis of Mars is somewhat inclined relative to the plane, which in turn means that, just like on Earth, Mars has 4 seasons, or seasons. However, due to the fact that the orbit of Mars around the Sun does not resemble an even circle, but is somewhat shifted to the side relative to the center (the sun), the length of the Martian seasons is also uneven.

So, in the northern hemisphere of the planet, the longest season is Spring, which lasts on Mars as much as seven earthly months. Summer And autumn about six months, but the Martian winter is the shortest season of the year, and lasts only four months.

During the Martian summer, the planet's polar ice cap, which is mostly carbon dioxide, shrinks significantly and may disappear altogether. However, even a short but unusually cold Martian winter is enough to build it up again. If there is water somewhere on Mars, then most likely you need to look for it at the pole, where it is trapped under a layer of frozen carbon dioxide.

The planet Mars has an equatorial diameter of 6787 km, i.e. 0.53 of the Earth's. The polar diameter is somewhat less than the equatorial one (6753 km) due to the polar compression equal to 1/191 (against 1/298 near the Earth). Mars rotates on its axis in much the same way as the Earth: its period of rotation is 24 hours. 37 min. 23 seconds, which is only 41 minutes. 19 sec. longer than the Earth's rotation period. The axis of rotation is inclined to the plane of the orbit at an angle of 65°, almost equal to the angle of inclination of the earth's axis (66°.5). This means that the change of day and night, as well as the change of seasons on Mars, proceed in almost the same way as on Earth. There are also climatic zones similar to those on Earth: tropical (tropical latitude ± 25 °), two temperate and two polar (polar circle latitude ± 65 °).

However, due to the remoteness of Mars from the Sun and the rarefaction of the atmosphere, the climate of the planet is much more severe than that of the earth. The year of Mars (687 Earth or 668 Martian days) is almost twice as long as the Earth, which means that the seasons last longer. Due to the large eccentricity of the orbit (0.09), the duration and nature of the seasons of Mars are different in the northern and southern hemispheres of the planet.

Thus, in the northern hemisphere of Mars, summers are long but cool, and winters are short and mild (Mars is close to perihelion at this time), while in the southern hemisphere, summers are short but warm, and winters are long and severe. On the disk of Mars in the middle of the XVII century. dark and light areas were seen. In 1784

V. Herschel drew attention to seasonal changes in the size of white spots near the poles (polar caps). In 1882, the Italian astronomer J. Schiaparelli compiled a detailed map of Mars and gave a system of names for the details of its surface; highlighting among the dark spots "seas" (in Latin mare), "lakes" (lacus), "bays" (sinus), "swamps" (palus), "straits" (freturn), "sources" (fens), " capes" (promontorium) and "regions" (regio). All these terms were, of course, purely conventional.

The temperature regime on Mars looks like this. In the daytime around the equator, if Mars is near perihelion, the temperature can rise to +25°C (about 300°K). But by evening, it drops to zero and below, and during the night the planet cools even more, since the rarefied dry atmosphere of the planet cannot retain the heat received from the Sun during the day.

The average temperature on Mars is much lower than on Earth - about -40 ° C. Under the most favorable conditions in the summer in the daytime half of the planet, the air warms up to 20 ° C - quite an acceptable temperature for the inhabitants of the Earth. But on a winter night, frost can reach up to -125 ° C. At winter temperatures, even carbon dioxide freezes, turning into dry ice. Such sharp temperature drops are caused by the fact that the rarefied atmosphere of Mars is not able to retain heat for a long time. The first measurements of the temperature of Mars using a thermometer placed at the focus of a reflecting telescope were carried out as early as the early 1920s. Measurements by W. Lampland in 1922 gave an average surface temperature of Mars of -28°C, E. Pettit and S. Nicholson in 1924 obtained -13°C. A lower value was obtained in 1960. W. Sinton and J. Strong: -43°C. Later, in the 50s and 60s. Numerous temperature measurements were accumulated and summarized at various points on the surface of Mars, in different seasons and times of the day. From these measurements, it followed that during the day at the equator the temperature can reach up to +27°C, but by morning it can reach -50°C.

The Viking spacecraft measured the temperature near the surface after landing on Mars. Despite the fact that at that time it was summer in the southern hemisphere, the temperature of the atmosphere near the surface in the morning was -160°C, but by the middle of the day it rose to -30°C. The pressure of the atmosphere at the surface of the planet is 6 millibars (i.e. 0.006 atmospheres). Above the continents (deserts) of Mars, clouds of fine dust constantly rush, which is always lighter than the rocks from which it is formed. Dust also increases the brightness of the continents in the red rays.

Under the influence of winds and tornadoes, dust on Mars can rise into the atmosphere and stay in it for quite some time. Strong dust storms were observed in the southern hemisphere of Mars in 1956, 1971 and 1973. As shown by spectral observations in infrared rays, in the atmosphere of Mars (as in the atmosphere of Venus) the main component is carbon dioxide (CO3). Long-term searches for oxygen and water vapor at first did not give reliable results at all, and then it was found that oxygen in the atmosphere of Mars is no more than 0.3%.

Mars currently has a dry and cold climate (left), but in the early stages of the planet's evolution, it most likely had liquid water and a dense atmosphere (right).

Study of

Observation history

Current Observations

Weather

Temperature

The average temperature on Mars is much lower than on Earth: −63°C. Since the atmosphere of Mars is very rarefied, it does not smooth out daily fluctuations in surface temperature. Under the most favorable conditions in the summer in the daytime half of the planet, the air warms up to 20 ° C (and at the equator - up to +27 ° C) - a completely acceptable temperature for the inhabitants of the Earth. The maximum air temperature recorded by the Spirit rover was +35 ° C. But winter at night, frost can reach even at the equator from -80 ° C to -125 ° C, and at the poles, night temperatures can drop to -143 ° C. However, diurnal temperature fluctuations are not as significant as on the atmosphereless Moon and Mercury. On Mars, there are temperature oases, in the areas of the "lake" Phoenix (plateau of the Sun) and Noah's land temperature difference is from -53°С to +22°С in summer and from -103°С to -43°С in winter. Thus, Mars is a very cold world, the climate there is much more severe than in Antarctica.

*Climate of Mars, 4.5ºS, 137.4ºE (from 2012 - to today [ when?])*
Indicator	Jan.	Feb.	March	Apr.	May	June	July	Aug.	Sen.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Year
Absolute maximum, °C	6	6	1	0	7	23	30	19	7	7	8	8	30
Average maximum, °C	−7	−18	−23	−20	−4	0	2	1	1	4	−1	−3	−5,7
Average minimum, °C	−82	−86	−88	−87	−85	−78	−76	−69	−68	−73	−73	−77	−78,5
Absolute minimum, °C	−95	−127	−114	−97	−98	−125	−84	−80	−78	−79	−83	−110	−127
Source: Centro de Astrobiología, Mars Science Laboratory Weather Twitter

Atmosphere pressure

The atmosphere of Mars is more rarefied than the Earth's air shell, and consists of more than 95% carbon dioxide, while the content of oxygen and water is a fraction of a percent. The average pressure of the atmosphere at the surface is on average 0.6 kPa or 6 mbar, which is 160 less than the earth's or equal to the earth's at an altitude of almost 35 km from the Earth's surface). Atmospheric pressure undergoes strong daily and seasonal changes.

Cloud cover and precipitation

Water vapor in the Martian atmosphere is no more than a thousandth of a percent, however, according to the results of recent (2013) studies, this is still more than previously thought, and more than in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere, and at low pressure and temperature, it is in a state close to saturation, so it often gathers in clouds. As a rule, water clouds form at altitudes of 10-30 km above the surface. They are concentrated mainly on the equator and are observed almost throughout the year. Clouds observed at high levels of the atmosphere (more than 20 km) are formed as a result of CO 2 condensation. The same process is responsible for the formation of low (at an altitude of less than 10 km) clouds in the polar regions in winter, when the atmospheric temperature drops below the freezing point of CO 2 (-126 °С); in summer, similar thin formations are formed from ice H 2 O

Formations of a condensation nature are also represented by fogs (or haze). They often stand above lowlands - canyons, valleys - and at the bottom of craters during the cold time of the day.

Blizzards can occur in the Martian atmosphere. In 2008, the Phoenix rover observed virgu in the polar regions - precipitation under the clouds, evaporating before reaching the surface of the planet. According to initial estimates, the rate of precipitation in the virga was very low. However, recent (2017) modeling of Martian atmospheric phenomena showed that at mid-latitudes, where there is a regular change of day and night, after sunset, the clouds cool sharply, and this can lead to snowstorms, during which particle speeds can actually reach 10 m /from. Scientists assume that strong winds combined with low cloudiness (usually Martian clouds form at an altitude of 10-20 km) can cause snow to fall on the surface of Mars. This phenomenon is similar to terrestrial microbursts - squalls of downwind wind at speeds up to 35 m/s, often associated with thunderstorms.

Snow has indeed been observed more than once. So, in the winter of 1979, a thin layer of snow fell in the Viking-2 landing area, which lay for several months.

Dust storms and tornadoes

A characteristic feature of the atmosphere of Mars is the constant presence of dust, the particles of which have a size of the order of 1.5 mm and consist mainly of iron oxide. Low gravity allows even rarefied air flows to raise huge clouds of dust to a height of up to 50 km. And the winds, which are one of the manifestations of the temperature difference, often blow over the surface of the planet (especially in late spring - early summer in the southern hemisphere, when the temperature difference between the hemispheres is especially sharp), and their speed reaches 100 m/s. In this way, extensive dust storms are formed, which have long been observed in the form of individual yellow clouds, and sometimes in the form of a continuous yellow veil covering the entire planet. Most often, dust storms occur near the polar caps, their duration can reach 50-100 days. Weak yellow haze in the atmosphere, as a rule, is observed after large dust storms and is easily detected by photometric and polarimetric methods.

Dust storms, which were well observed on images taken from orbiters, turned out to be barely visible when photographed from landers. The passage of dust storms at the landing sites of these space stations was recorded only by a sharp change in temperature, pressure, and a very slight darkening of the general sky background. The layer of dust that settled after the storm in the vicinity of the Viking landing sites amounted to only a few micrometers. All this indicates a rather low bearing capacity of the Martian atmosphere.

From September 1971 to January 1972, a global dust storm took place on Mars, which even prevented photographing the surface from the Mariner 9 probe. The mass of dust in the atmospheric column (with an optical thickness of 0.1 to 10) estimated during this period ranged from 7.8⋅10 -5 to 1.66⋅10 -3 g/cm 2 . Thus, the total weight of dust particles in the Martian atmosphere during the period of global dust storms can reach up to 10 8 - 10 9 tons, which is commensurate with the total amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere.

The question of water availability

For the stable existence of pure water in the liquid state, the temperature And the partial pressure of water vapor in the atmosphere should be above the triple point on the phase diagram, while now they are far from the corresponding values. Indeed, studies conducted by the Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965 showed that there is currently no liquid water on Mars, but data from NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers indicate the presence of water in the past. On July 31, 2008, water in the state of ice was discovered on Mars at the landing site of NASA's Phoenix spacecraft. The device found ice deposits directly in the ground. There are several facts in support of the claim of the presence of water on the surface of the planet in the past. First, minerals have been found that could only form as a result of prolonged exposure to water. Secondly, very old craters are practically wiped off the face of Mars. The modern atmosphere could not cause such destruction. The study of the rate of formation and erosion of craters made it possible to establish that wind and water destroyed them most of all about 3.5 billion years ago. Many gullies have approximately the same age.

NASA announced on September 28, 2015 that Mars currently has seasonal liquid salt water flows. These formations manifest themselves in the warm season and disappear - in the cold. Planetologists came to their conclusions by analyzing high-quality images obtained by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) scientific instrument of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Martian orbiter.

On July 25, 2018, a report was released on a discovery based on research by the MARSIS radar. The work showed the presence of a subglacial lake on Mars, located at a depth of 1.5 km under the ice of the South polar cap (at Planum Australe), about 20 km wide. This became the first known permanent body of water on Mars.

Seasons

Like on Earth, on Mars there is a change of seasons due to the inclination of the axis of rotation to the plane of the orbit, so in winter the polar cap grows in the northern hemisphere, and almost disappears in the southern, and after six months the hemispheres change places. At the same time, due to the rather large eccentricity of the planet's orbit at perihelion (winter solstice in the northern hemisphere), it receives up to 40% more solar radiation than in aphelion, and in the northern hemisphere, winter is short and relatively moderate, and summer is long, but cool, in in the south, on the contrary, summers are short and relatively warm, and winters are long and cold. In this regard, the southern cap in winter grows up to half the pole-equator distance, and the northern cap only up to a third. When summer comes at one of the poles, carbon dioxide from the corresponding polar cap evaporates and enters the atmosphere; the winds carry it to the opposite cap, where it freezes again. In this way, the carbon dioxide cycle occurs, which, along with the different sizes of the polar caps, causes a change in the pressure of the Martian atmosphere as it orbits the Sun. Due to the fact that in winter up to 20-30% of the entire atmosphere freezes in the polar cap, the pressure in the corresponding area drops accordingly.

Changes over time

As on Earth, the climate of Mars underwent long-term changes and in the early stages of the planet's evolution was very different from the current one. The difference is that the main role in the cyclic changes in the Earth's climate is played by a change in the eccentricity of the orbit and the precession of the rotation axis, while the tilt of the rotation axis remains approximately constant due to the stabilizing effect of the Moon, while Mars, without such a large satellite, can undergo significant changes in inclination. its axis of rotation. Calculations have shown that the inclination of the axis of rotation of Mars, which is now 25 ° - about the same value as that of the Earth - was 45 ° in the recent past, and on a scale of millions of years could vary from 10 ° to 50 °.

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