Robert Clark wrote:
Sorry Alex we're going to go to the mats over this one.

Alex writes:
Sorry, I'm afraid not. I don't have any inherent problems with near-surface water ice closer to the Martian equator than previously suspected, especially in light of the Odyssey GRS suite readings. Indeed, the "recent" flows at Athabasca Valles/Cerberus Fossae could very well indeed have deposited water ice in the shallow subsurface. However, and this is only an opinion, I feel that the source regions, and hence the melting isotherm, for the water at this locale were/are deep, perhaps several kilometers.

Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii