Volume 13 Issue 3, March 2020

The InSight mission on Mars is currently providing us with the first seismic data from a planetary body other than our own Earth since the 1970s. Past efforts will inform this next chapter in planetary seismology.

Mars’s newest seismometer needed to separate marsquakes from meteorology. Continuous weather observations to keep it honest are revealing new facets of Mars’s churning atmosphere.

Geophysical and meteorological measurements by NASA’s InSight lander on Mars reveal a planet that is seismically active and provide information about the interior, surface and atmospheric workings of Mars.

The InSight lander has expanded our knowledge of the atmosphere of Mars by observing various phenomena, including airglow, bores, infrasound and Earth-like turbulence.

The magnetic field measured by the InSight lander on Mars varies daily and is ten times stronger than expected. The field is inferred to originate from components of basement rocks magnetized by an ancient dynamo of Earth-like strength.

Mars is seismically active: 24 subcrustal magnitude 3–4 marsquakes and 150 smaller events have been identified up to 30 September 2019, by an analysis of seismometer data from the InSight lander.

The crust beneath the InSight lander on Mars is altered or fractured to 8–11 km depth and may bear volatiles, according to an analysis of seismic noise and wave scattering recorded by InSight’s seismometer.

Spatial patterns in the phosphorus and nitrogen limitation in natural terrestrial ecosystems are reported from analysis of a global database of the resorption efficiency of nutrients by leaves.

Ocean heat transport underneath the floating tongue of 79 North Glacier, Greenland, is controlled by a sill in the inflow channel, according to ship-based and mooring data as well as bathymetric data.

Bubble-mediated flux of oxygen into the Labrador Sea surface ocean contributes to air–sea gas exchange, suggest observations from moored profiling and Argo float data. Climate models that omit the process may underestimate oxygen in the deep ocean.

Marine fish biomass and diversity did not change during the Eocene–Oligocene transition despite widespread cooling and Antarctic ice sheet expansion, according to microfossil fish teeth records from a set of deep-sea cores.

The water cycle was in two different steady states, before and after continental emergence, as recorded in the decreasing oxygen isotope values of seawater since the Archaean, according to an inverse geochemical model of the oceanic crustal record.

Changing stresses and pore fluid pressures during subduction of seamounts, as simulated with a numerical model that couples mechanical and hydrological processes, help explain observed patterns of megathrust slip.