Unravelling Martian Methane Mysteries in the Canadian Arctic

An image of our ABB methane detector deployed at Gypsum Hill on Axel-Heiberg Island in Nunavut. Alex's work here showed that the variability in a measured methane signal might be able to tell us more about our distance from the source than the total amount of methane does. This is important for how we might prospect for methane seeps on Mars. 

Oh, and look at that view!
Sometimes it's not just the results of our investigations that take our breath away.

by Alex Innanen

Almost three years ago now (and wow, time really flies) I spent three weeks in Nunavut, which you can read all about here. I talked a little in that post about why I went up and what sort of work I was doing there. But the work did not end when I landed back in Ottawa (or got back to Toronto after an extended weekend at the cottage). No, I then spent the next several months going “I guess I need to write this up in a paper somehow.” This was complicated by a few things – the fact I hadn’t ever written a paper based on fieldwork (nor read many), the fact that the results were not super clear cut, and some good old fashioned procrastination. But I ended up presenting the work a few times, including at my yearly research evaluation meetings and at a couple conferences, and it started to come together into some kind of story.
 
When I took methane measurements, I let the instrument ingest the air passing over for ten minutes, and the instrument took a measurement every second over this time period. This meant I ended up with what I took to calling a ‘spiky plot’ of hundreds of methane measurements over that ten-minute period. I noticed two things in these ‘spiky plots’. The first was that I could find the average methane concentration over that period, and that the average methane concentration tended to be highest right next to the source of the methane and drop off as I moved away downwind – typically the way you expect methane (or any gas) to work, which if nothing else meant the instrument was working. The other thing I noticed was that the variation in how spiky the spiky plot was was also higher right next to the methane source. That is to say, the methane signal varied over a much larger range when I was closest to the source, and had a much smaller range further away or upwind of the source. You can see this in the three graphs below which I took at one of the springs.

Three spiky plots. You can see that the upwind measurement has not only a lower average concentration (dashed line) but also is much, much less spiky (solid line) than the other two. Note that the y-axis is much larger on the 'Inside Wolf Spring' measurement because I saw such huge spikes of methane!

I saw this same phenomenon with the variability getting higher closer to the source even when I wasn’t moving in the exact same direction as the wind. At Wolf Spring I only moved in a (mostly) straight line in the wind direction, but at Gypsum Hill I took two sets of measurements – one along the wind direction, and one at a diagonal to the wind direction. This second set of measurements suggested that getting more data at various locations around the methane source could give us a clearer understanding of how methane behaves in a two-dimensional grid around such a source.

To that end, I sent the instrument back up to the arctic last summer in the company of an MSc student from McMaster with detailed instructions to get me a grid of measurements around Wolf Spring. My procrastination had achieved one thing – I was able to add this new dataset into my paper. And I’m glad I was! From the 2024 measurements I was able to see to impact both distance from the source and the angular distance I was from the wind direction had on the methane signal. (I’ve visualised the geometry simply below in case it’s not clear what I mean, where θ is that angular distance from the wind direction.)

Now, in 2022 I did not have any way of accurately measuring the wind direction. Instead I used a technique which is actually similar to how the Phoenix Lander did it, wherein I held up a roll of flagging tape and watched which way the wind blew it. In 2024 we were a bit more high-tech: the master’s student had access to a small weather station which gave me actual numbers for my wind direction. Knowing the position of the instrument at each measurement and the wind direction at the time of the measurement, I was able to get the distance from the source (d) and the angle of the instrument to the wind direction (θ) and combine these (d/cos(θ)) and compare this value to the average methane concentration and the variability in the measurements. I found that both fell off with increasing d/cos(θ) (or distance from the center of the methane plume), but that the variability actually fell off in a slightly more predictable way.  

Okay, you may be thinking, this is all mildly interesting but what does this have to do with planetary science? Well, as has been discussed on this blog before, there’s a lot we don’t know about martian methane. One of the unanswered questions is where it’s coming from – both in the sense of what is producing it, but of more interest to this work, the actual location from which it is being emitted. We know that we see methane plumes on Mars, but we don’t know how long they last, how the behave or, again, where they’re coming from. If we did send an instrument to Mars to investigate this, we could use what I learned in the arctic to determine what that instrument should look like and also how we should use it to find the source of these methane plumes.

I learned that the variability is a better indicator of how close we are to a methane source. The variability I saw in my spiky plots is over very short timescales, thus our hypothetical instrument should be able to make high frequency measurements to capture changes over these short timescales. I also learned that knowing the wind direction is pretty important, so our instrument should be combined with some kind of wind sensor. My measurements were taken from various locations around the methane source, so having our instrument on something that can move like a rover (or even a drone!) may be more useful than if the instrument just stands still.

There’s more I could say about this, but I don’t entirely want to spoil my paper (coming soon to an Acta Astronautica near you!). Even though it took nearly three years, it turns out there was quite a bit to learn from a few slap-dash methane measurements in the very distant north. 

To read the paper, visit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576525003212

My Summer Trip to MARS

This past summer, PVL PhD student Alex Innanen traveled up to the high arctic (on an expedition led by Prof. Haley Sapers) to test an instrument called MAGE which may someday fly to Mars. Ironically, the name of the research base at which they were stationed is itself named MARS! Given the harsh conditions, the name is perhaps merited and many space agencies use this area to test out technologies they hope to use in exploration activities. (Image above: MARS as seen from up on Gypsum Hill. You can see the edge of Colour Lake below, and Wolf Mountain rising above the ridge, with Crown Glacier beside it.)

by Alex Innanen

As part of my PhD work, I have been working with an instrument called MAGE (the Mars Atmospheric Gas Evolution experiment), which is intended to study trace gases in the martian atmosphere (including methane). The instrument is an off-axis spectrometer, which I won’t get into detail about here, but it is able to measure very small amounts of and changes in methane and other trace gases.

In July, I was lucky enough to be able to take a version of the instrument up to Nunavut for testing – specifically to Umingmat Nunaat (ᐅᒥᖕᒪᑦ ᓄᓈᑦ), or Axel Heiberg Island, where the McGill Arctic Research Station (MARS) is located. MARS is at 79° N and change, which is not quite as far north as you can go in Canada but is pretty darn close. There were three of us going up: myself, Haley, and Calvin, a grad student from CalTech. Up north, we were joined by two grad students from McGill, whose group was then amalgamated with ours.

The reason for going so far away to test the instrument is because of two sites near MARS that are potential martian analogues – Lost Hammer and Gypsum Hill. Both are hypersaline (very salty) cold springs, which are home to methane seeps. The polar desert also has lots of polygonal terrain, which is formed from the freeze-thaw cycle in the ground and has also been seen on Mars. Polygonal terrain can also show interesting methane dynamics, with the troughs acting as a source of methane and the centre of the polygon acting as a sink. 

Polygonal terrain on Umingmat Nunaat seen from the air. 

But before we could get to taking measurements and making sure the instrument worked in such a remote location, we had to get there. The first leg of our journey was from Toronto to Ottawa, from where our flight would leave. We spent a couple days in Ottawa doing last minute shopping and packing and repacking out many coolers and bags of equipment and food. We had to bring not only the personal things we would need for around three weeks in the north, but also all the scientific equipment for the MAGE experiment and biological sampling that would also be done, and food to last us for our time at MARS. Altogether we had nine pieces of luggage, most of which was oversized by the airline’s standards, as well as a 40-50 L backpack apiece.

From Ottawa, we took the Canadian North airline up to Iqaluit. Iqaluit is already above the tree line and, having never been in the arctic, as soon as we set down I was blown away by the landscape, which is absolutely unlike any other place I’ve ever been. We had three hours in Iqaluit, so we left the airport to do a little looking around before it was time to get on a (smaller) plane to our next stop,
Mittimatalik (ᒥᑦᑎᒪᑕᓕᒃ, Pond Inlet). We had a brief stop there, then a quick hop to Ikpiarjuk (ᐃᒃᐱᐊᕐᔪᒃ, Arctic Bay), and then finally on to Qausuittuq (ᖃᐅᓱᐃᑦᑐᖅ, Resolute). This is where the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP) has a base, and from where we would be flying out to MARS. 

The plan was to spend a few days at PCSP before flying to MARS. However, this plan was quickly derailed by the weather. It was a very wet year, and aside from us, many other teams had not been able to get to their field sites because of a combination of fog, thunderstorms, and, at MARS, an inability to land the small twin otter planes because the ground was too wet. Being stuck at PCSP was not the worst thing in the world. We got to meet lots of other scientists and learn about what they were up to, go for many hikes and appreciate the beautiful arctic landscape, and pack and repack and prepare for when we eventually were able to go to MARS.

Our field team in front of the Twin Otter that took us to and from MARS. From left to right: Calvin, Haley, Louis-Jaques, Scott and Me. 

On July 13, 10 days after we got to PCSP, it finally happened. The fog had finally lifted enough for us to get out, and while the ground was still too soggy to land right at MARS, we were able to land a few kilometers down Expedition Fjord. From there, us and our piles of equipment were ferried up to MARS by helicopter. The helicopters were a very special part of our time at MARS. We had originally planned to have only one helicopter day to take us to Lost Hammer, which is one Fjord south of Expedition. However due to the problems with the twin otter flights and other factors, we ended up having a helicopter at MARS nearly the entirety of our trip. Between us and another group we also had plenty of pilot hours, so we were able to make not only multiple trips to Lost Hammer but also to Crown Glacier and the much nearer Gypsum Hill springs (which are within walking distance, but when you’re bringing a bunch of equipment with you it’s nice to get a lift).

MAGE near the foot of Crown Glacier.

MARS is on one side of Gypsum Hill, overlooking Colour Lake and a view down Expedition Fjord. Once again I was absolutely blown away by the beauty, especially since when we landed the sun had peaked out of the clouds on its way around the sky. Like Qausuittuq, Umingmat Nunaat is a type of region known as a ‘polar desert’, but it didn’t seem like it. Not only was the tundra soggy from so much unseasonal rain, but it was carpeted with all kinds of artic plants – saxifrage, arctic poppies and even a kind of tree, the arctic willow, which instead of growing upwards sends its branches along the ground. As I was taking measurements with the MAGE instrument in the camp, a bee buzzed past me, and I was surprised to see something that looked like a butterfly. It was a butterfly! One of the great parts of staying somewhere with so many scientists is you get to learn about their areas of expertise, and there was an entomologist at MARS who told us all about the kinds of insects we might see. 

The major goal for the MAGE instrument was to be able to bring it up to almost 80° N and turn it on – success! More success followed, and I managed to get readings at MARS, the two spring sites, the polygonal terrain near MARS and at the foot of Crown Glacier. I had a lot of fun figuring out where to put the instrument, how to best run it with its power limitations, and what might make an interesting set of readings. Not only did the instrument successfully collect data on methane abundance, but we also figured out how we might be able to improve the instrument and the data we collected. For instance, I was measuring wind direction by holding up a roll of flagging tape and seeing which way the dangling end blew. An anemometer would let us get much more detailed information about how the wind effects our methane measurements.

The MAGE instrument taking measurements with Lost Hammer spring in the background. The white cone-like mound is made of Gypsum, with the spring hiding inside.

Before I left for the trip, I was extremely nervous, not only because I had never undertaken field work like this before, but also because I’d be spending nearly three weeks in one of the most remote parts of the world and had no idea what to expect. But from the moment I set foot in Nunavut I knew I’d made the right choice to go. There were still difficulties, like when it seemed like we might never make it to MARS, or getting frustrated with the limitations of the instrument, but taken altogether not only did MAGE preform admirably but doing fieldwork helped me discover and strengthen skills I didn’t know I had. I’m so grateful to have had this experience.

There and Back Again: A MAPLE Tale

 

As we approach the final year of the MAPLE project, it's time to take the instrument out into the field! This past summer, PVL PhD student Charissa Campbell and then-MSc (now PhD) student Grace Bischof took MAPLE out to Argentia, Newfoundland one of the foggiest places on Earth where the Gulf Stream meets the Labrador current. Mother nature didn't disappoint and Charissa and Grace came back with spectacular images and science.

by Charissa Campbell

This summer was quite busy as we were preparing for the deployment of our MAPLE (Mars Atmospheric Panoramic camera and Laser Experiment) instrument to the highly foggy area of Argentia, Newfoundland. There are two main field testing sites for MAPLE which includes a foggy location (large aerosols) and Arctic location (small, Martian-like aerosols). With the Arctic being more Mars-like, MAPLE will travel alone and be controlled remotely to fully mimic spaceflight conditions. However, as a starting point, we decided to travel with MAPLE to the Argentia, NL area to test in foggy conditions.

MAPLE is based on a previous experiment done by the Phoenix lander that took images of the onboard lidar laser to classify ice-water content of aerosols near the surface (https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11030). However, the camera could only take an image of a small portion of the sky, limiting the view of the laser. MAPLE is equipped with a panoramic camera to allow the full sky to be captured, which also allows for multiple lasers to be in use at the same time and clouds to be monitored during the day. For Argentia, we equipped MAPLE with 8 different lasers in a variety of wavelengths and power (class) to try to determine if a specific set was better for future measurements. Adding different wavelengths of lasers allows us to also investigate the size of aerosols. To further increase the science output of MAPLE, we will employ techniques used with the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, Curiosity) to calculate aerosol properties such as optical depth, wind properties and others.  By using knowledge from previous Martian surface missions, we can develop MAPLE in a way to maximize the amount of returnable data in a low-cost way.

Defining a mission as low-cost means trying to find the minimal amount of power, data volume and size needed to acquire your measurements. Since we are in the early stages of the project, we created MAPLE from scratch using a pelican case which held our components. This includes a panoramic camera, 8 lasers and a raspberry pi that is used to control the camera. Several battery packs were used, one for each laser and a separate larger one for just the raspberry pi. As MAPLE gets more automated, the lasers will eventually be controlled by the raspberry pi and power can be more streamlined through just the Pi. The size of MAPLE seemed to work well, and windows had to be installed in the top for the camera and lasers to shine through. I never took construction in school, so I had a lot of late nights with the drill to push through two rectangles for the laser windows. Luckily, we already had a bubble panoramic window so I simply had to construct a properly sized hole for the window. Somehow, I managed to fully construct MAPLE and not injure myself. We also got humidity measuring packs to see how sealed the inside was. Minimal humidity was noted within the case, which is a win considering we were in essentially a cloud most times we were on the field. One concern we did have with keeping MAPLE low-cost was that the images were rather large and I only equipped the raspberry pi with a 32GB SD card. A lot of extra time was spent moving files over to a portable hard drive so we will be looking into upgrading the size of the SD card while also optimizing the size of the images. 

The field site itself was really beautiful and was a bucket list item for me as Newfoundland was the last province for me to visit in Canada. Interestingly enough, there were no rental cars available on the whole island for the 2 week we were wanting to travel. However, with the coming end of the foggy season we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to make observations. I love taking different methods of transportation and stumbled upon a ferry that travels from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to, lo and behold, Argentia. There were rental cars available in North Sydney so my colleague and I flew directly there, picked up the car and immediately took it on the ferry across to the island. We were able to get a room on the ferry itself with 2 beds, a bathroom, and the best view of the ocean. This was ideal as the ferry is about 16 hours long, overnight, so the bed was very much needed. 

Once arrived, we got settled in the town of Placentia, which was a short drive to/from the field site which was in the port where our ferry was docked. They had a cool lifting bridge that was a great backdrop for determining when the fog was rolling in. We did most of our experiments back at our arrival dock.  It was originally a World War 2 airfield site owned by the Americans, given by the British for the sole purpose of making it a Naval airbase. The Atlantic Charter was signed just outside the port which was thought to lead to the United Nations Charter (https://www.hiddennewfoundland.ca/argentia-naval-station). As someone who loves reading history, it was amazing to do the experiments in such an area. We were on one of the old runways as it was perfect for pointing the lasers in a way determine how far the lasers could travel. This was the goal for the first day on the site.

As always, something will go wrong on the field site and that was the case on our first day. When we first started testing, we expected to fiddle with the image parameters, such as exposure, to see the laser. However, no matter what we did we could not see any of the lasers in the images. We had not brainstormed what would happen in this case so we took a rather long lunch break to think about what we could do to mitigate the problem. We decided to try taking images anyways in the sun and increased the number of images taken for each laser configuration. The sun might be so bright in the day that the camera simply cannot view them in the image. We also decided to do some trial runs when it got dark. One evening, the fog rolled in so heavily that I got MAPLE all set up late in the evening. It got so foggy that it truly felt like I was in a horror movie or unsolved mysteries as I was unable to see a few feet in front of me. Images of what MAPLE could see in the dark showed how important the dark was to our experiments. After gathering a variety of images, we knew what the game plan was for the rest of the trip. 

We finished our Newfoundland trip with images in both day and night that will be analyzed further. Many questions were both answered, and the trip was extremely useful on telling us how we need to prepare MAPLE for the Arctic. The trip was a challenge but a great way to gain leadership experience. Since I was not the only person on this trip, Grace has these words to say about her time on our field trip:

“Most of the research I’ve completed throughout my degree has consisted of analyzing data acquired from space missions – whether that be temperature, data or pictures taken from the surface of Mars. Because of this, my days usually involve sitting at my computer, writing code, and generally not moving around too much. Going to Newfoundland for fieldwork allowed me to explore different facets of research that I usually do not get to explore. Working with MAPLE meant driving out to the field site in the mornings, setting up the instrumentation, and taking several experiments to try and capture the science. There is a degree of unpredictability with fieldwork that we don’t normally experience in our day-to-day work. Will it be foggy enough? Will the batteries have enough power for the experiments? Will the inside of the instrument get too humid? Carrying out this fieldwork was a very unique experience, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to try something new!”

 

Green Shoots, Space Gardens

It's snowing in Toronto this morning. Seriously. But irrespective of what I see outside my window, I know spring to be near at hand. Many of us have experienced the therapeutic power of caring for and raising plants and are looking forward to getting out into our gardens. I for one need to have some greenery around my office and home, which marks me as a bit unusual. In space, however, plants may eventually serve a more vital role. This week Alex examines the first green shoots researchers are cultivating along that pathway. Above, a zucchini plant is pictured on the ISS. 

by Alex Innanen

Spring is arriving in fits and starts in Toronto, and that means it’s time to start this year’s seeds and get out in the garden. It would also normally be time to visit a nursery (or five) but this year is a bit different, and my gardening routine has been disrupted by isolation. Which got me thinking about growing plants in an even more isolated location – that’s right, it’s time for space plants!

I know that taking care of my plants, spending time in the garden, can be very relaxing and grounding. The same is true for astronauts. But we haven’t been growing plants in space just because they’re nice to work with. One big reason to grow plants in space is for food. On the ISS, it’s relatively simple to resupply the astronauts with fresh food but think back to early explorers spending months at sea and getting scurvy. If only they had had a grow light and some arugula! Plants have also been suggested as a from of life support – we know that plants recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen, the kind of reverse of what happens in animals where we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. In addition, wastewater can be used to grow plants, and the same plants then transpire, or release, clean water vapour, which can be condensed and used again.

The strength of Ancient Mars’ Greenhouse Effect

Over the past couple of years, Paul Godin has been leading an effort in my group to understand the warming potential of the ancient martian atmosphere, above he shows experimentally-derived values for CO2-CH4 CIA as measured using the Canadian Light Source. He just submitted a paper on this topic which is now under review.
 

By Dr. Paul Godin

We’ve discussed in previous blogposts about our group’s effort to better constrain the early Mars atmosphere by taking measurements at the Canadian Light Source (http://york-pvl.blogspot.com/2018/11/searching-for-liquid-water-on-mars-at.html and http://york-pvl.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-continuing-adventures-at-canadian.html). As a quick summary, geological features on the surface of present-day Mars imply that there was once liquid water on the surface. To have liquid water on the surface, a sufficiently strongly absorbing atmosphere is required to produce enough of a greenhouse effect to warm the surface above freezing temperatures. Since most ancient Mars modeling suggest that Mars did not have a dense atmosphere, the remaining possibility is that the gas composition of an ancient Mars atmosphere could be strongly absorbing. One idea was collision induced absorption (CIA) between CO2 and H2 molecules, and CO2 and CH4 molecules, could provide enough absorption to warm ancient Mars. The goal of the CLS trips was to experimentally measure this CIA effect to determine if it was as strong as predicted.

The Continuing Adventures at the Canadian Light Source

This past February, a team from PVL once again descended on the Canadian Light Source (CLS), pictured above, to learn more about the conditions that prevailed in the atmosphere of early Mars and maybe even to learn something that could help current-day orbiters understand their results.

By Charissa Campbell

Recently, some of the PVL team traveled back to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon to perform more experiments at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). Our first trip was discussed by project lead, Dr. Paul Godin in a previous PVL blog post (http://york-pvl.blogspot.com/2018/11/searching-for-liquid-water-on-mars-at.html). Unfortunately our U of T member (Tyler Wizenberg) could not attend this trip because he was traveling to the arctic for experiments at the same time. To fill his shoes, PVL PhD candidate Giang Nguyen tagged along.

For some background information, the purpose of these experiments is to better understand how liquid water could have existed on the surface of early Mars. Currently, Mars atmospheric models have not been able to show the surface temperature rising above 0°C. However, abundant evidence of erosion by water has been seen from orbit and there are surface geological experiments pointing towards liquid water having been present on the surface (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4398). 

If water erosion is evident then there must be another explanation for warming in the ancient Martian atmosphere that current atmospheric models cannot explain. This is where our experiment comes in: looking at the collision-induced absorption (CIA) of greenhouse gases to test a theory from Wordsworth et al. (https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071766) that these gases might provide additional atmospheric absorption not currently included in models that would allow surface temperatures to rise. If our experiments agree with Wordsworth's models, it may be another piece to the puzzle towards understanding water and early Mars.