Thermal tides in the Martian middle atmosphere as seen by the Mars Climate Sounder

Lee, C.; Lawson, W. G.; Richardson, M. I.; Heavens, N. G.; Kleinböhl, A.; Banfield, D.; McCleese, D. J.; Zurek, Richard W.; Kass, D. M.; Schofield, J. T.; Leovy, Conway Β.; Taylor, F. W.; Toigo, A. D.

doi:10.1029/2008je003285

Cited by 114 publications

(168 citation statements)

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“…One notable exception to this aliasing problem is provided by MRO/MCS off axis sampling that provided an opportunity to sample at several local times, thereby confirming the usefulness of such observations for conducting detailed tidal analyses (e.g. Lee et al 2009). Also, regular seasonal and inter-annual sampling would permit dust event impacts upon the upper atmosphere to be examined throughout the Martian year, and over several Mars years.…”

Section: How Does the Thermospheric Structure Respond To Lower Atmospmentioning

confidence: 91%

The Aeronomy of Mars: Characterization by MAVEN of the Upper Atmosphere Reservoir That Regulates Volatile Escape

et al. 2014

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The Mars thermosphere-ionosphere-exosphere (TIE) system constitutes the atmospheric reservoir (i.e. available cold and hot planetary neutral and thermal ion species) that regulates present day escape processes from the planet. The characterization of this TIE system, including its spatial and temporal (e.g., solar cycle, seasonal, diurnal, episodic) variability is needed to determine present day escape rates. Without knowledge of the physics and chemistry creating this TIE region and driving its variations, it is not possible to constrain either the short term or long term histories of atmosphere escape from Mars. MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) will make both in-situ and remote measurements of the state variables of the Martian TIE system. A full characterization of the thermosphere (∼100-250 km) and ionosphere (∼100-400 km) structure (and its variability) will be conducted with the collection of spacecraft in-situ measurements that systematically span most local times and latitudes, over a regular sampling of Mars seasons, and throughout the bottom half of the solar cycle. Such sampling will far surpass that available from existing spacecraft and ground-based datasets. In addition, remote measurements will provide a systematic mapping of the composition and structure of Mars neutral upper atmosphere and coronae (e.g. H, C, N, O), as well as probe lower altitudes. Such a detailed characterization is a necessary first step toward answering MAVEN's three main science questions (see Jakosky et al. 2014, this issue). This information will be used to determine present day escape rates from Mars, and provide an estimate of integrated loss to space throughout Mars history.

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Section: How Does the Thermospheric Structure Respond To Lower Atmospmentioning

confidence: 91%

The Aeronomy of Mars: Characterization by MAVEN of the Upper Atmosphere Reservoir That Regulates Volatile Escape

et al. 2014

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“…Wilson and Hamilton (1996), Bridger and Murphy (1998) and Lewis and Read (2003) describe major tidal modes found in various Mars global circulation models (MGCMs). More recently, the thermal signature of tides in the atmosphere has been documented from Mars Global Surveyor (Banfield et al 2000, Guzewich et al 2014 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observations (Lee et al 2009), supplemented by surface pressure measurements from the Curiosity Rover (Harri et al 2014). Lewis and Barker (2005) used data assimilation, combining MGS thermal and dust opacity measurements with an MGCM (see Lewis et al 2007 for details), to diagnose the sun-synchronous diurnal and semi-diurnal tides and the first Kelvin mode and to show their correlation with the atmospheric dust loading over three martian years.…”

Section: Diurnal Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The physics of Martian weather and climate: a review

2015

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The planet Mars hosts an atmosphere that is perhaps the closest in terms of its meteorology and climate to that of the Earth. But Mars differs from Earth in its greater distance from the Sun, its smaller size, its lack of liquid oceans and its thinner atmosphere, composed mainly of CO 2 . These factors give Mars a rather different climate to that of the Earth. In this article we review various aspects of the martian climate system from a physicist's viewpoint, focusing on the processes that control the martian environment and comparing these with corresponding processes on Earth. These include the radiative and thermodynamical processes that determine the surface temperature and vertical structure of the atmosphere, the fluid dynamics of its atmospheric motions, and the key cycles of mineral dust and volatile transport. In many ways, the climate of Mars is as complicated and diverse as that of the Earth, with complex nonlinear feedbacks that affect its response to variations in external forcing. Recent work has shown that the martian climate is anything but static, but is almost certainly in a continual state of transient response to slowly varying insolation associated with cyclic variations in its orbit and rotation. We conclude with a discussion of the physical processes underlying these longterm climate variations on Mars, and an overview of some of the most intriguing outstanding problems that should be a focus for future observational and theoretical studies.

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“…More recently, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) (McCleese et al, 2007) has provided considerable additional insights to Martian thermal structure (e.g. Lee et al, 2009;Guzewich et al, 2012;Kleinbo¨hl et al, 2013); in this study we focus on TES, reserving results using MCS for a future publication.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of assimilation window length on diurnal features in a Mars atmospheric analysis

Zhao¹,

Greybush²,

Wilson³

et al. 2015

Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography

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A B S T R A C T Effective simulation of diurnal variability is an important aspect of many geophysical data assimilation systems. For the Martian atmosphere, thermal tides are particularly prominent and contribute much to the Martian atmospheric circulation, dynamics and dust transport. To study the Mars diurnal variability and Mars thermal tides, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Mars Global Climate Model with the 4D-local ensemble transform Kalman filter (4D-LETKF) is used to perform an analysis assimilating spacecraft temperature retrievals. We find that the use of a 'traditional' 6-hr assimilation cycle induces spurious forcing of a resonantly enhanced semi-diurnal Kelvin waves represented in both surface pressure and mid-level temperature by forming a wave 4 pattern in the diurnal averaged analysis increment that acts as a 'topographic' stationary forcing. Different assimilation window lengths in the 4D-LETKF are introduced to remove the artificially induced resonance. It is found that short assimilation window lengths not only remove the spurious resonance, but also push the migrating semi-diurnal temperature variation at 50 Pa closer to the estimated 'true' tides even in the absence of a radiatively active water ice cloud parameterisation. In order to compare the performance of different assimilation window lengths, short-term to mid-range forecasts based on the hour 00 and 12 assimilation are evaluated and compared. Results show that during Northern Hemisphere summer, it is not the assimilation window length, but the radiatively active water ice clouds that influence the model prediction. A 'diurnal bias correction' that includes bias correction fields dependent on the local time is shown to effectively reduce the forecast root mean square differences between forecasts and observations, compensate for the absence of water ice cloud parameterisation and enhance Martian atmosphere prediction. The implications of these results for data assimilation in the Earth's atmosphere are discussed.

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Thermal tides in the Martian middle atmosphere as seen by the Mars Climate Sounder

Cited by 114 publications

References 50 publications

The Aeronomy of Mars: Characterization by MAVEN of the Upper Atmosphere Reservoir That Regulates Volatile Escape

The Aeronomy of Mars: Characterization by MAVEN of the Upper Atmosphere Reservoir That Regulates Volatile Escape

The physics of Martian weather and climate: a review

Impact of assimilation window length on diurnal features in a Mars atmospheric analysis

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