Distribution of Io's Volcanic Thermal Emission From Galileo and Ground-Based Data

Detections of Io's hot spots and identification of volcanic features have been catalogued by various workers [e.g., 1-4]. However, to understand the role played by volcanism in global heat transport, thermal emission from Io's volcanoes has to be quantified, locally, regionally and globally. Only then can robust estimates be made of volcanic advection, which may reveal internal heating patterns controlled by the evolving tidal resonance between Io, Europa and Ganymede. We have completed an analysis of all suitable spacecraft data and, using additional ground-based data, have quantified the thermal emission from all of Io's volcanoes during the Galileo epoch down to the limit of detection [5-7]. Galileo identified many dark features on Io that did not exhibit obvious anomalous thermal emission, yet their low albedo suggested that these features were at least warm (cool, high albedo sulphurous deposits had not formed on them). We used dark areas identified from the recently-published Io Global Map [3] and a knowledge of the detection limit of the Galileo NIMS instrument to quantify the thermal emission from these areas. In all, our analysis includes 272 individual thermal sources yielding ~60 TW. Our "snapshot" of global volcanic activity shows that Io's paterae yield ~80% of this amount, with a preponderance of thermal emission emanating from the northern hemisphere. This is strongly biased by Loki Patera and, to a lesser extent, by recent outburst locations. Of the remaining identified hot spot thermal emission, ~15% comes from active or recent lava flow fields, and the remaining 5% comes from massive outburst eruptions (some in paterae) and very small hot spots. The energy accounted for makes up ~60% of Io's total thermal emission of ~100 TW [8]. It is possible that a multitude of very small hot spots beneath instrument detection limits, and/or cooler, secondary volcanic processes involving sulphurous compounds may be responsible for the unaccounted heat flow. This work was conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA, and is supported by the NASA OPR and PG&G Programs. Copyright 2011 Caltech.