Temperature
Differing values have been reported for the average temperature on Mars, with a common value being −55 °C (−67 °F). Surface temperatures have been estimated from the Viking Orbiter Infrared Thermal Mapper data; this gives extremes from a warmest of 27 °C (81 °F) to −143 °C (−225 °F) at the winter polar caps. Actual temperature measurements from the Viking landers range from −17.2 °C (1.0 °F) to −107 °C (−161 °F).
It has been reported that "On the basis of the nightime air temperature data, every northern spring and early northern summer yet observed were identical to within the level of experimental error (to within ±1 K)" but that the "daytime data, however, suggest a somewhat different story, with temperatures varying from year-to-year by up to 6 K in this season. This day-night discrepancy is unexpected and not understood". In southern spring and summer variance is dominated by dust storms, which increase the value of the night low temperature and decrease the daytime peak temperature, resulting in a small (20C) decrease in average surface temperature, and a moderate (30C) increase in upper atmosphere temperature.
Read more about this topic: Climate Of Mars
Famous quotes containing the word temperature:
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice.... It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss—a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)