Entrainment and dynamics of ocean-derived impurities within Europa's ice shell

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 125(10),(2020): e2020JE006394, doi:10.1029/2020JE006394.Compositional heterogeneities within Europa's ice shell likely impact the dynamics and habitability of the ice and subsurface ocean, but the total inventory and distribution of impurities within the shell are unknown. In sea ice on Earth, the thermochemical environment at the ice‐ocean interface governs impurity entrainment into the ice. Here, we simulate Europa's ice‐ocean interface and bound the impurity load (1.053–14.72 g/kg [parts per thousand weight percent, or ppt] bulk ice shell salinity) and bulk salinity profile of the ice shell. We derive constitutive equations that predict ice composition as a function of the ice shell thermal gradient and ocean composition. We show that evolving solidification rates of the ocean and hydrologic features within the shell produce compositional variations (ice bulk salinities of 5–50% of the ocean salinity) that can affect the material properties of the ice. As the shell thickens, less salt is entrained at the ice‐ocean interface, which implies Europa's ice shell is compositionally homogeneous below ~1 km. Conversely, the solidification of water filled fractures or lenses introduces substantial compositional variations within the ice shell, creating gradients in mechanical and thermal properties within the ice shell that could help initiate and sustain geological activity. Our results suggest that ocean materials entrained within Europa's ice shell affect the formation of geologic terrain and that these structures could be confirmed by planned spacecraft observations.This study was supported by the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, grants NNX16AP43H S01 and NNX16AP43H S002. Britney Schmidt was additionally supported by the Europa Clipper Mission. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High‐End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center.2021-03-2