TP10

Planetary cryospheres encompass environments enriched of volatile ices, in the form of frost deposits, polar caps, glaciers, and permafrost. Cryospheres are found across the entire Solar System at very different heliocentric distances: on Earth, ice plays a crucial role in landscape evolution, is a key hydrological resource, and acts as a valuable paleoclimatic indicator.
The Martian polar caps exhibit analogous features to those on Earth, including surface modification and associated landforms, but they also contain CO₂ ice. At mid-latitudes, periglacial landforms, such as polygonal terrains indicate the presence of subsurface ice, while glacier-like features contain relict ice and provide evidence of past glacial activity. Moreover, airless bodies such as Mercury and the Moon host icy deposits within the permanently shadowed regions of their polar craters. Similarly, dwarf planet Ceres presents surface and near-subsurface water ice, along with geomorphological and compositional evidence for volatile-driven activity. Further away, beyond the Solar System’s frost line, water ice becomes the dominant compositional endmember. All satellites of Jupiter and Saturn have icy crusts. For some of them (Europa and Enceladus) we have clues which imply the presence of internal oceans. In addition to water ice, CO₂ and CH₄ also condense into cryospheres at extremely low temperatures.
Therefore, studying ice on various planetary bodies is crucial for understanding their composition, geological history, climate evolution, and the processes which distributed water and other ices around the solar system.
This session welcomes a broad range of contributions, including remote sensing (e.g., geomorphic, geophysical and compositional analyses), numerical modelling, and laboratory experiments, as well as research incorporating terrestrial analogues.