MGS TES observations of the water vapor above the seasonal and perennial ice caps during northern spring and summer

Mars’ water vapor mapping by the SPICAM IR spectrometer: Five martian years of observations

“…Fedorova et al (2010) obtained a very good agreement between revised MAWD and SPICAM (MY 27-29) retrievals using the same absorption band and similar retrieval technique, suggesting that the martian water cycle has remained stable over 3 decades. Similarly, the analysis of TES column abundances near and above the North Pole residual ice cap by Pankine et al (2010) shows that the amount of water vapor in Northern polar region was also stable during TES spectrometer operations (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004).…”

“…Smith (2004) notes $20% more water vapor in the Southern Hemisphere polar summer maximum in the TES observations for MY 24 as compared to MY 25 and 26. Pankine et al (2010) reported that the water vapor polar annulus and the abundance above the Pole exhibits interannual variability during the Northern spring and summer that could be related to the atmospheric temperature difference and local dust storms, or variability of the polar atmospheric circulation. Despite these differences, Pankine et al (2010) note that the total integrated mass of water vapor in the North Polar Region was essentially the same for all 3 years (MY 24-26) observed by TES.…”

“…Pankine et al (2010) reported that the water vapor polar annulus and the abundance above the Pole exhibits interannual variability during the Northern spring and summer that could be related to the atmospheric temperature difference and local dust storms, or variability of the polar atmospheric circulation. Despite these differences, Pankine et al (2010) note that the total integrated mass of water vapor in the North Polar Region was essentially the same for all 3 years (MY 24-26) observed by TES. Fedorova et al (2010) revised MAWD data with up-to-date spectroscopy, atmospheric models, and the same algorithms as for SPICAM IR data.…”

“…Different results from Mars Express experiments, which measured the water vapor simultaneously, are related to different retrieval procedures and specific effects in different spectral bands (Korablev et al, 2006a;Maltagliati et al, 2011a). The in-depth comparison between retrievals by PFS, SPICAM and OMEGA led also to important improvements in the retrieval algorithms applied to MAWD (Fedorova et al, 2010) and TES (Fouchet et al, 2007;Pankine et al, 2010) observations. Revised water vapor abundances for these both primary instruments appeared significantly lower than the original values.…”

Constraints on water vapor vertical distribution at the Phoenix landing site during summer from MGS TES day and night observations

“…The 'uniform' model was successfully applied to MGS TES data to establish a global view of the interannual, seasonal and geographic variability of the martian water cycle (e.g. Smith, 2002Smith, , 2004Pankine et al, 2010), which is supported by later observations by multiple instruments on Mars Express spacecraft (Fouchet et al, 2007;Melchiorri et al, 2007;Tschimmel et al, 2008;Trokhimovsky et al, in press) and by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft (Smith et al, 2009a). Water vapor condensation levels estimated with the 'uniform' model vary seasonally and geographically from $40 km (during southern summer L s = 270°) to $10-15 km (during late northern spring L s = 30-90°) (Smith, 2002), broadly consistent with other observations.…”