Variability in Io's Volcanism on Timescales of Periodic Orbital Changes
- Creators
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de Kleer, Katherine
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Nimmo, Francis
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Kite, Edwin
Abstract
The widespread volcanism on the Jovian moon Io is powered by tidal heating, yet we lack a deep understanding of how this distinctive heating process affects the locations, timing, or intensities of Io's eruptions. We show that the quasiperiodic behavior of the volcano Loki Patera in 1987–2018 matches the timescales for the evolution of Io's eccentricity and semimajor axis (~480 and ~460 days). If this orbital forcing is driving Loki Patera's variability, a low‐pass geophysical filter such as poroelastic flow, or a resonant amplification of Io's wobble, could account for the importance of these long‐period orbital variations despite their small amplitudes. The peak volcanic response is predicted to roughly coincide with Io's maximum eccentricity, consistent with the observations. High‐cadence observations over the next several years have the potential to conclusively discriminate between orbital versus geophysical control of Loki Patera's variability.
Additional Information
© 2019 American Geophysical Union. Received 6 MAR 2019; Accepted 5 MAY 2019; Accepted article online 8 MAY 2019; Published online 24 JUN 2019. The authors are grateful to Ryan Park for providing Horizons data products, Michael E. Brown for statistics feedback, and Emily Brodsky for advice on poroelastic flow. K. d. K. is supported by the Heising‐Simons Foundation through a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellowship. The authors declare no financial conflicts of interest. The data supporting the conclusions can be found in the following locations: (a) for observations prior to 2001: Rathbun et al. (2002, Figure 1), Rathbun and Spencer (2006, Figure 1), Rathbun and Spencer (2010, Figure 2); (b) for Galileo NIMS observations: Davies et al. (2012); and (c) for adaptive optics observations from 2001 to 2018: Data Set S1, which compiles data from de Pater et al. (2017), de Kleer and de Pater (2016), and de Kleer et al. (2019).Attached Files
Published - Kleer_et_al-2019-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
Supplemental Material - grl58989-sup-0002-2019gl082691-si.pdf
Supplemental Material - grl58989-sup-0002-2019gl082691-sup-0001-data_set_si-s01.dat
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 97912
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190815-091534549
- 51 Pegasi b Fellowship
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- Created
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2019-08-15Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department