A new Mars Climate Database v5.1

Abstract

International audienceWhat is the Mars Climate Database? 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) [1-3] 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). 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 MCD may be accessed either online (in a somewhat simplified form) via an interactive server available at http://www-mars.lmd.jussieu.fr (useful for moderate needs), or from the complete version which includes advanced access and post-processing software (contact [email protected] and/or [email protected] to obtain a free copy). Overview of MCDv5 contents: The MCD provides mean values and statistics of the main meteorological variables (atmospheric temperature, density, pressure and winds) as well as atmospheric composition (including dust and water vapor and ice content), as the GCM from which the datasets are obtained includes water cycle [4-6], chemistry [7,8], and ionosphere [9,10] models. The database extends up to and including the thermosphere[11-13] (~350km). Since the influence of Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) input from the sun is significant in the latter, 3 EUV scenarios (solar minimum, average and maximum inputs) account for the impact of the various states of the solar cycle