Computer Science – Sound
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufm.p52a..06h&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #P52A-06
Computer Science
Sound
[0305] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Aerosols And Particles, [3314] Atmospheric Processes / Convective Processes, [3346] Atmospheric Processes / Planetary Meteorology, [6225] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Mars
Scientific paper
Observations by the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) over the last two martian years have permitted the creation of pressure-pegged retrievals of temperature, dust opacity, and water ice opacity at a vertical resolution of approximately 5 km. These retrievals provide information about the vertical distribution of dust and water ice over a wide dynamic range of mass mixing ratio and/or aerosol heating rate. Thus, MCS retrievals can powerfully complement observations by nadir-looking instruments on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or surface landers. For whereas nadir-looking instruments are most sensitive to order unity cloud cover near the surface, MCS limb retrievals are most sensitive to the sub-visible hazes farther above the surface. In this presentation, we will discuss two broad types of dust haze we have identified in MCS retrievals and their significance for dust lifting, transport, and removal processes in the martian atmosphere. In late northern spring and early northern summer, the dust mass mixing ratio profile in the tropics appears to have a significant maximum between 15 and 25 km above the local surface, “the high altitude tropical dust maximum.” While water ice condensation on dust particles and orographically-driven dust lifting may play some role in driving this distribution, we have argued that its primary driver is more likely to be a process akin to moist convection in which shortwave heating of dust in Mars’s thin atmosphere has very similar effects to the latent heat released by condensing water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere. This type of haze is associated with low column dust opacities throughout the latitudinal band in which it occurs. The other type of haze is associated with the much higher column opacities attributed to dust storm activity. We will present examples from north polar cap edge dust storm activity in northern spring, early season tropical dust storm activity in the middle of northern summer, and the global dust storm of 2007. The latter two events produced hazes with dust mass mixing ratio maxima of greater magnitude and at higher altitude than the high altitude tropical dust maximum, which are consonant with hazes observed by MGS/TES during the 2001 global dust storm. These observations raise the question of whether the second type of dust haze could be driven by a larger-scale version of the pseudo-moist convection we have proposed to explain the first.
Heavens Nicholas G.
Kass David
Kleinboehl Armin
Mars Climate Sounder Science Team
McCleese Daniel J.
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