The new Mars climate database

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Modeling the martian atmosphere with the LMD global climate model

Introduction: For several years we have been developing a 3D Global Climate Model (GCM) for Mars derived from the models used on Earth for weather forecasting or climate changes studies [1]. The purpose of such a project is ambitious: we wish to build a 'Mars simulator' based only on physical equations, with no tailor-made forcing, but able to reproduce all the available observations of the Martian climate (temperatures, winds, but also clouds, dust, ices, chemical species, etc...). The GCM is constantly evolving, thanks to a contnuous collaboration between several teams based in France (LMD, SA), the UK (The Open University, University of Oxford) and Spain (Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia), and with the support of ESA and CNES. We are currently working on an improved version of the model. Several new parametrisation are included in the heart of the model (radiative transfer, surface and subsurface processes, dynamics) and the applications of the GCM are in contnuous development (Water, dust, CO2, radon cycles, photochemistry, thermosphere, ionosphere, etc...

The latest (version 4.3) Mars Climate Database

Introduction: The Mars Climate Database (MCD) is a database of meteorological fields derived from General Circulation Model (GCM) numerical simulations of the Martian atmosphere and validated using available observational data. The MCD includes complementary post-processing schemes such as high spatial resolution interpolation of environmental data and means of reconstructing the variability thereof. The GCM is developed at Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique du CNRS (Paris, France) [1,2] in collaboration with the Open University (UK), the Oxford University (UK) and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (Spain) with support from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES)

Mars Climate Database version 5

The Mars Climate Database (MCD) is a database of meteorological fields derived from General Circulation Model (GCM) numerical simulations [2,4] of the Martian atmosphere and validated using available observational data. The MCD includes complementary post-processing schemes such as high spatial resolution interpolation of environmental data and means of reconstructing the variability thereof. The GCM is developed at LMD (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Paris, France) in collaboration with several teams in Europe: LATMOS (Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales, Paris, France), the Open University (UK), the Oxford University (UK) and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (Spain) with support from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The MCD is freely distributed and intended to be useful and used in the framework of engineering applications as well as in the context of scientific studies which require accurate knowledge of the state of the Martian atmosphere. The Mars Climate Database (MCD) has over the years been distributed to more than 150 teams around the world. With the many improvements implemented in the GCM over the last few years, a new series of reference simulations have been run and compiled in a new version (version 5) of the Mars Climate Database, released in the first half of 2012

First climatology of polar mesospheric clouds from GOMOS/ENVISAT stellar occultation instrument

GOMOS (Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars), on board the European platform ENVISAT launched in 2002, is a stellar occultation instrument combining four spectrometers and two fast photometers which measure light at 1 kHz sampling rate in the two visible channels 470–520 nm and 650–700 nm. On the day side, GOMOS does not measure only the light from the star, but also the solar light scattered by the atmospheric molecules. In the summer polar days, Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMC) are clearly detected using the photometers signals, as the solar light scattered by the cloud particles in the instrument field of view. The sun-synchronous orbit of ENVISAT allows observing PMC in both hemispheres and the stellar occultation technique ensures a very good geometrical registration. Four years of data, from 2002 to 2006, are analyzed up to now. GOMOS data set consists of approximately 10 000 cloud observations all over the eight PMC seasons studied. The first climatology obtained by the analysis of this data set is presented, focusing on the seasonal and latitudinal coverage, represented by global maps. GOMOS photometers allow a very sensitive PMC detection, showing a frequency of occurrence of 100% in polar regions during the middle of the PMC season. According to this work mesospheric clouds seem to be more frequent in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere. The PMC altitude distribution was also calculated. The obtained median values are 82.7 km in the North and 83.2 km in the South

Is Gliese 581d habitable? Some constraints from radiative-convective climate modeling

The recently discovered exoplanet Gl581d is extremely close to the outer edge of its system's habitable zone, which has led to much speculation on its possible climate. We have performed a range of simulations to assess whether, given simple combinations of chemically stable greenhouse gases, the planet could sustain liquid water on its surface. For best estimates of the surface gravity, surface albedo and cloud coverage, we find that less than 10 bars of CO2 is sufficient to maintain a global mean temperature above the melting point of water. Furthermore, even with the most conservative choices of these parameters, we calculate temperatures above the water melting point for CO2 partial pressures greater than about 40 bar. However, we note that as Gl581d is probably in a tidally resonant orbit, further simulations in 3D are required to test whether such atmospheric conditions are stable against the collapse of CO2 on the surface.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Back to the basics: improving the prediction of temperature, pressure and winds in the LMD general circulation model

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Study of the hydrogen escape rate at Mars during Martian years 28 and 29 from comparisons between SPICAM/Mars Express observations and GCM-LMD simulations

EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019, held 15-20 September 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland, id. EPSC-DPS2019-499-2.- © Author(s) 2019. CC Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.esWe simulate the 3D Martian hydrogen corona during the Martian years 28 and 29 at different solar longitudes using a set of models of atomic hydrogen density from the surface to the exosphere. These simulations are compared to Mars Express / SPICAM observations and show a strong underestimate of the brightness by our models near southern summer that could be due to an underestimate of the amount of water vapor delivered to the upper atmosphere at this season

The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) of Three Spectrometers for the ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter

The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) package is an element of the Russian contribution to the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission. ACS consists of three separate infrared spectrometers, sharing common mechanical, electrical, and thermal interfaces. This ensemble of spectrometers has been designed and developed in response to the Trace Gas Orbiter mission objectives that specifically address the requirement of high sensitivity instruments to enable the unambiguous detection of trace gases of potential geophysical or biological interest. For this reason, ACS embarks a set of instruments achieving simultaneously very high accuracy (ppt level), very high resolving power (>10,000) and large spectral coverage (0.7 to 17 μm—the visible to thermal infrared range). The near-infrared (NIR) channel is a versatile spectrometer covering the 0.7–1.6 μm spectral range with a resolving power of ∼20,000. NIR employs the combination of an echelle grating with an AOTF (Acousto-Optical Tunable Filter) as diffraction order selector. This channel will be mainly operated in solar occultation and nadir, and can also perform limb observations. The scientific goals of NIR are the measurements of water vapor, aerosols, and dayside or night side airglows. The mid-infrared (MIR) channel is a cross-dispersion echelle instrument dedicated to solar occultation measurements in the 2.2–4.4 μm range. MIR achieves a resolving power of >50,000. It has been designed to accomplish the most sensitive measurements ever of the trace gases present in the Martian atmosphere. The thermal-infrared channel (TIRVIM) is a 2-inch double pendulum Fourier-transform spectrometer encompassing the spectral range of 1.7–17 μm with apodized resolution varying from 0.2 to 1.3 cm−1. TIRVIM is primarily dedicated to profiling temperature from the surface up to ∼60 km and to monitor aerosol abundance in nadir. TIRVIM also has a limb and solar occultation capability. The technical concept of the instrument, its accommodation on the spacecraft, the optical designs as well as some of the calibrations, and the expected performances for its three channels are described