[X] My Assistant

[ngunn]

The new 'looking ahead' with T39:
http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=4689

[ngunn]

I note that the caption to the south pole image refers to the hypothesis that the north-south difference in lake numbers is a temporary seasonal phenomenon. While I liked that idea for a time I thought it had been ruled out because there is just not enough heat available to evaporate so much liquid in one seasonal cycle. Is the thinking on this changing again, or is the caption writer just making passing mention of an earlier idea?

To me it looks as if most of the drainage channels in the south polar 'highlands' specifically avoid the few lakes that seem to be present. In other words everything drains northward from a regional topographic high near the south pole - except for a few enclosed basins that can't drain, and therefore contain lakes. That makes sense if the poles are areas of net deposition of solids as suggested in the recent CHARM presentation. Is it then the great northern lakes that are the anomalies, since these require recent or ongoing downwarping of the crust on a regional scale to maintain their basins?