On the Solar Climate of the Moon and the Resulting Surface Temperature Distribution

Abstract

The solar climate of our Moon is analyzed using the results of numerical simulations and the recently released data of the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment (DLRE) to assess (a) the resulting distribution of the surface temperature, (b) the related global mean surface temperature < T s >, and (c) the effective radiation temperature T e often considered as a proxy for < T s > of rocky planets and/or their natural satellites, where T e is based on the global radiation budget of the well-known “thought model” of the Earth in the absence of its atmosphere. Because the Moon consists of similar rocky material like the Earth, it comes close to this thought model. However, the Moon’s astronomical features (e.g., obliquity, angular velocity of rotation, position relative to the disc of the solar system) differ from that of the Earth. Being tidally locked to the Earth, the Moon’s orbit around the Sun shows additional variation as compared to the Earth’s orbit. Since the astronomical parameters affect the solar climate, we predicted the Moon’s orbit coordinates both relative to the Sun and the Earth for a period of 20 lunations starting May 24, 2009, 00:00 UT1 with the planetary and lunar ephemeris DE430 of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. The results revealed a mean heliocentric distance for the Moon and Earth of 1.00124279 AU and 1.00166376 AU, respectively. The mean geocentric distance of the Moon was 384792 km. The synodic and draconic months deviated from their respective means in a range of -5.7 h to 6.9 h and ±3.4 h, respectively. The deviations of the anomalistic months from their mean range between -2.83 d and 0.97 d with the largest negative deviations occurring around the points of inflection in the curve that represents the departure of the synodic month from its mean. Based on the two successive passages of the Sun through the ascending node of the lunar equator plane, the time interval between them corresponds to 347.29 days, i.e., it is slightly longer than the mean draconic year of 346.62 days. We computed the local solar insolation as input to the multilayer-force restore method of Kramm et al. (2017) that is based on the local energy budget equation. Due to the need to spin up the distribution of the regolith temperature to equilibrium, analysis of the model results covers only the last 12 lunations starting January 15, 2010, 07:11 UT1. The predicted slab temperatures, T slab , considered as the realistic surface temperatures, follow the bolometric temperatures, T bol , acceptably. According to all 24 DLRE datasets related to the subsolar longitude &oslash; ss , the global averages of the bolometric temperature amounts to T bol = 201.1k ± 0.6K . Based on the globally averaged emitted infrared radiation of < F IR >=290.5W·m -2 ± 3.0 W·m -2 derived from the 24 DLRE datasets, the effective radiative temperature of the Moon is < T e, M >=< T bol >1/4 = 271.0k ± 0.7K so that < T bol >&cong;0.742 T e, M . The DLRE observations suggest that in the case of rocky planets and their natural satellites, the globally averaged surface temperature is notably lower than the effective radiation temperature. They differ by a factor that depends on the astronomical parameters especially on the angular velocity of rotation.