New Map of Io’s Volcanic Heat Flow

Abstract:

We have created a global map of Io’s volcanic heat flow from 245 thermal sources indicative of ongoing or recent volcanic activity, and 8 additional outbursts [1,2]. We incorporate data from both spacecraft and ground-based instruments that have observed Io primarily at infrared wavelengths. This map provides a snapshot of Io’s volcanic activity and distribution during the Galileo epoch. Io’s volcanic activity, in terms of thermal emission from individual eruptive centres, spans nearly six orders of magnitude, from Surt in 2001 (78 TW) [3] to a faint hot spot in patera P197 (0.2 GW) [1]. We account for ≈54% of Io’s yearly volcanic heat flow, which emanates from ≈2% of Io’s surface [1]. Averaged heat flow from the non-active surface is 1 ± 0.2 W m². This quantification of volcanic heat flow map provides constraints for modelling the magnitude and location of the internal heating of Io by tidal dissipation. The observed heat flow distribution is the result of interior heating and volcanic advection, the delivery of magma to the surface regardless of its depth of origin. As noted previously [1, 2] the distribution of heat flow is not uniform, which is not unexpected. The volcanic heat flow does not match the expected distributions from end-member models for both the deep-seated (mantle) heating model (which predicts enhanced polar heating) and the shallow (aesthenospheric) heating model, which predicts enhanced thermal emission at sub-jovian and anti-jovian longitudes. Intriguingly, heat flow curves using a bin size of 30 degrees show a longitudinal offset from the shallow heating model prediction of some tens of degrees [2], suggesting a more complex mixture of deep and shallow heating. Future work includes refinement of thermal emission by including temporal variability of thermal emission at individual volcanoes, and comparing the heat flow map with the Io Geological Map [4] and global topography [5]. We thank the NASA OPR Program for support. Part of this work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-California Institute of Technology, under contract to NASA. Refs: [1] Veeder et al. (2014) Icarus in press. [2] Veeder et al. (2012) Icarus 219 701-722. [3] Marchis et al. (2002) Icarus 160 124-131. [4] Williams et al. (2011) Icarus 214 91-112. [5] White (2014) JGR-Planets 119 1276–1301.