Meteorological insights from planetary heat flow measurements

Planetary heat flow measurements are made with a series of high-precision temperature sensors deployed in a column of regolith to determine the geothermal gradient. Such sensors may, however, be susceptible to other influences, especially on worlds with atmospheres. First, pressure fluctuations at the surface may pump air in and out of pore space leading to observable, and otherwise unexpected, temperature fluctuations at depth. Such pumping is important in subsurface radon and methane transport on Earth: evidence of such pumping may inform understanding of methane or water vapor transport on Mars. Second, the subsurface profile contains a muted record of surface temperature history, and such measurements on other worlds may help constrain the extent to which Earth’s Little Ice Age was directly solar-forced, versus volcanic-driven and/or amplified by climate feedbacks.