Thursday, November 13, 2014


 


Previously, I spoke of Olympus Mons in terms of size and creation. But for this unit I need to cover climate. In order to do that for my location we would have to consider the climate of the entire planet of mars. Now, even though mars is 11 percent smaller than earth and further away from the sun there are similarities like the polar ice caps, seasonal changes, and weather patterns. When it comes to temperature Mars is much colder. I am sorry but if you plan on visiting mars jackets and ski pants won't do! You'll need a special suit... According to space.com the average temperatures on Mars are about  minus 80 degree  Ferinheight (minus 60 degrees Celsius ). The range of temperatures however, can range from a cozy minus 70 degrees Ferinheight (20 degrees Celsius) on the equator   to a not so cozy minus 195 degrees Ferinheight (minus 125 Celsius) in the pole caps of the planet.

   

Another thing to consider is the atmosphere, its roughly 100 times thinner than that of Earths but is still thick enough to support weather, clouds and winds. Clouds on mars  are pretty interesting, according to redorbit.org, when looked at for the first time they can very easily be mistaken for the high altitude wisps similar to cirrus clouds on our planet. Since scientists have not sampled martian clouds directly, the exact conditions to create such beautiful collections of ice crystals and droplets cannot be 100% percent concluded. Given what they know about the atmosphere they most likely consist of carbon dioxide and water based crystals.


Now Olympus Mons, has a diverse collection of altitude levels thus temperatures and pressures will change. For example if you were standing on top of the volcano you would actually be sticking out of Mar's atmosphere. Pretty crazy... and pretty tall... Fun fact it snows on mars! The snowflakes however  are made of carbon dioxide not H2O.