Observations of Dust, Ice Water Clouds, and Precipitation in the Atmosphere of Mars

Details Observations of Dust, Ice Water Clouds, and Precipitation in the Atmosphere of Mars Observations of Dust, Ice Water Clouds, and Precipitation in the Atmosphere of Mars

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.u14a..09w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #U14A-09

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0343 Planetary Atmospheres (5210, 5405, 5704), 5210 Planetary Atmospheres, Clouds, And Hazes (0343)

Scientific paper

The Phoenix mission has included several instruments for observing the atmosphere of Mars. The measurements include atmospheric temperature, pressure, wind, humidity, optical depth, composition, and imaging. A unique instrument on the Phoenix mission was a lidar that measured the backscatter of pulsed laser light emitted upward into the atmosphere. The lidar measurements of dust provided a view of the structure of the boundary layer, the changes throughout each sol, and over longer time scales with passing weather systems and seasonal progression. The depth of the boundary layer followed a daily cycle with a peak height in the late afternoon. The vertical structure of the atmospheric dust is often remarkably homogeneous, in agreement with modeling, but on occasion there are layers of enhanced scattering that are more difficult to explain. Water ice clouds were detected by the lidar as layers of enhanced signal. The ratio of the extinction and backscatter coefficients was similar to that associated with cirrus clouds on earth. The extinction coefficient derived from the lidar signals was used to estimate the ice water content. Around the time of summer solstice the most prominent clouds were detected at heights above 10 km. As the season progressed and the polar atmosphere started to cool (50 sols past solstice) clouds started to form in the boundary layer. Two separate cloud layers formed each sol around midnight. One cloud at ground level and another at the top of the residual boundary layer (4-6 km). Fall streaks could be clearly seen in the lidar observations, where ice crystals were precipitating toward the ground. The precipitating ice crystals sublimated in the air below the upper level cloud to form virga. The precipitation within the ground level cloud likely reached the surface. Analysis of these observations has involved the use of numerical modeling of the dynamics, radiative transfer, and microphysics in the atmosphere of Mars. The simulations are compared directly to the lidar dust and cloud measurements.

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