The annual cycle of water vapor on Mars as observed by the Thermal Emission Spectrometer

Physics

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5409 Atmospheres: Structure And Dynamics, 5464 Remote Sensing, 6225 Mars

Scientific paper

We report here on the latitude, longitude, and seasonal dependence of water vapor abundance for over one full Martian year as observed by the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES). A maximum in water vapor abundance is observed at high latitudes during mid-summer in both hemispheres, reaching a maximum value of ~100 pr-μ m in the north and ~50 pr-μ m in the south. Low water vapor abundance (<5 pr-μ m) is observed at middle and high latitudes in the fall and winter of both hemispheres. There are large differences in the hemispheric (north versus south) and seasonal (perihelion versus aphelion) behavior of water vapor. The latitudinal and seasonal dependence of the decay of the northern summer water vapor maximum implies cross-equatorial transport of water to the southern hemisphere, while there is little or no corresponding transport during the decay of the southern hemisphere summer maximum. A very steep latitudinal gradient in water vapor abundance (high in the north) forms during early northern summer (Ls= 90o--150o), while water vapor is distributed more uniformly in latitude during early southern summer (Ls= 270o--330o). The annually-averaged amount of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere is 17 pr-μ m in the northern hemisphere and 9.5 pr-μ m in the southern hemisphere. However, when referenced to a 6.1 mbar pressure surface to remove the effect of topography, the annually-averaged amount of water vapor becomes 17 pr-μ m in the latitude band from 10oS--40oN, and 12 pr-μ m everywhere else. The latitude-longitude dependence of annually-averaged water vapor (corrected for topography) has a significant positive correlation with albedo and significant negative correlations with thermal inertia and surface pressure.

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