Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 46, Issue 12, Pages 6327-6332Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2019GL082691
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- Heising-Simons Foundation through a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellowship
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The widespread volcanism on the Jovian moon Io is powered by tidal heating, yet we lack a deep understanding of how this distinctive heating process affects the locations, timing, or intensities of Io's eruptions. We show that the quasiperiodic behavior of the volcano Loki Patera in 1987-2018 matches the timescales for the evolution of Io's eccentricity and semimajor axis (similar to 480 and similar to 460 days). If this orbital forcing is driving Loki Patera's variability, a low-pass geophysical filter such as poroelastic flow, or a resonant amplification of Io's wobble, could account for the importance of these long-period orbital variations despite their small amplitudes. The peak volcanic response is predicted to roughly coincide with Io's maximum eccentricity, consistent with the observations. High-cadence observations over the next several years have the potential to conclusively discriminate between orbital versus geophysical control of Loki Patera's variability.
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