Formation of chemically stratified layer in Ganymede’s ocean: implications for upcoming JUICE mission

Chemically stratified layers in the deep oceans of icy moons may strongly influence the oceans’ dynamics, thermal and chemical evolution, and therefore their habitability. Such layers can form during the differentiation of the refractory cores as they heat up due to the decay of long-lived radioactive elements. In the case of Ganymede, salts could be transported through the high-pressure ice layer to form a denser salt water layer at the base of the ocean. Such a layer would inhibit ocean convection, limiting chemical and thermal transport. It is therefore crucial to understand how these layers form and what specific signatures they may leave in geophysical observations of future space missions. The present work describes numerical simulations of the formation of stratified layers and the predicted observables that could be detected by instruments on the JUICE spacecraft.

3-D numerical simulations of Ganymede’s rotating ocean are performed with the PARODY code. Rayleigh-Bénard convection is imposed. We investigate the effect of either a constant flux of heavy salts or a fixed composition at the base of the ocean. Two regimes are identified by varying the dimensionless chemical Rayleigh (buoyancy over viscosity) and Schmidt numbers (viscosity over diffusivity). In the first regime, heavy salts are entrained and mixed in the convective region. In the second regime, the entrainment is too weak and a chemically stratified layer develops, eventually filling the entire ocean.

Extrapolation to Ganymede suggests the current existence of a chemically stratified layer at the base of the ocean with a thickness close to 30 km. By considering different stratifications in Ganymede’s ocean in the PlanetProfile and ForcedTides codes, we show that signatures of stratified layers might be detected in the gravity field, induced magnetic field, and tidal deformation responses. The problem of non-uniqueness in the individual observations points to the need to jointly invert these datasets from the JUICE mission to constrain the existence and properties of stratified oceanic layers.