The Water Vapor Abundance Near the Surface of Venus from Venus Express / VIRTIS Observations

Details The Water Vapor Abundance Near the Surface of Venus from Venus Express / VIRTIS Observations The Water Vapor Abundance Near the Surface of Venus from Venus Express / VIRTIS Observations

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.6203b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #62.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.512

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We present an analysis of Venus Express/VIRTIS observations of the 1.18-μm window on Venus' night side. We used the infrared M-channel of the VIRTIS instrument, an imaging spectrometer for the range 1-5 μm with a resolution of about 17 nm. The 1.18-μm window probes down to the surface and allows us to map and monitor the water abundance in the lowest scale height of the atmosphere. Besides CO2 and H2O molecular bands, an additional "continuum" source of absorption exists in the window, likely due to CO2 collision-induced bands and extreme far wings of strong CO2 bands. From the variation of the emission with surface elevation, we determined this absorption to be 1.1 ± 0.2 × 10-9 cm-1 amagat-2. From the best fit of the 1.18-micron window in various areas of Venus' southern hemisphere, we derived a H2O mole fraction of 32 ± 7 ppm in the altitude range 0-15 km. This result agrees with previous ground-based and Galileo/NIMS determinations (Taylor et al. 1997, in Venus II, pp. 325-351) but has significantly lower error bars. The derived mole fraction is similar to that inferred at higher altitudes from the 2.3- and 1.74-μm windows, suggesting a constant-with-height water profile from the surface up to 40 km. We also searched for spatial variations of the H2O near-surface abundance using various VIRTIS-M observational sequences and did not detect any latitudinal variations to within 1.5% (i.e. ± 0.5 ppm) in the range 60°S - 20°N.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

The Water Vapor Abundance Near the Surface of Venus from Venus Express / VIRTIS Observations does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with The Water Vapor Abundance Near the Surface of Venus from Venus Express / VIRTIS Observations, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The Water Vapor Abundance Near the Surface of Venus from Venus Express / VIRTIS Observations will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1792413