So, I was recently checking out the TES global map movies available at http://tes.asu.edu/. Very cool to see and get a sense of seasons changing (and the strength of the global dust storm last year). The nighttime temperatures movie in particular is interesting, as it shows very smoothly (and with little variation) the seasonal changes since the data has been collected.

But...then up comes the end of the movie, temperature data from just last week from http://tes.asu.edu/dust/. The one that really pops out, is http://tes.asu.edu/dust/p24371-tnight.gif. Now, -55 is hardly warm but compared to the area (and just about every other nighttime map of that area over the course of data being collected) thats a downright heatwave.


Any ideas if what we're looking at is a glitch or if TES witnessed some sort of geothermal event (or impact?). It doesn't look like there is any variation at all in daytime or atmospheric either that day or days following, or even in the next nighttime...so maybe geologic activity is jumping the gun a bit.

never mind
I heard back from one of the TES scientists, Dr. Tim Titus of ASU who looked at the original data strips:

The star shaped hot spot you see in the TES night image is an artifact of some bad data. It looks like a possible calibration error as only a few data points have the anomalous hot temperature. And they are preceded by several data points at 3 Kelvin (the temperature of deep space).