ALBERT

Description: Two intense microwave spectra lines exist in the martian atmosphere that allow unique sounding capabilities: water vapor at 183 GHz and the (2-1) rotational line of CO at 230 GHz. Microwave spectra line sounding is a well-developed technique for the Earth's atmosphere for sounding from above from spacecraft and airplanes, and from below from fixed surface sites. Two simple instruments for temperature sounding on Mars (the CO line) and water vapor measurements are described. The surface sounder proposed for the MESUR sites is designed to study the boundary layer water vapor distribution and the temperature/pressure profiles with vertical resolution of 0.25 km up to 1 km with reduced resolution above approaching a scale height. The water channel will be sensitive to a few tenths of a micrometer of water and the temperature profile will be retrieved to an accuracy between 1 and 2 K. The latter is routinely done on the Earth using oxygen lines near 60 GHz. The measurements are done with a single-channel heterodyne receiver looking into a 10-cm mirror that is canned through a range of elevation angles plus a target load. The frequency of the receiver is sweep across the water and CO lines generating the two spectra at about 1-hr intervals throughout the mission. The mass and power for the proposed instrument are 2 kg and 5-8 W continuously. The measurements are completely immune to the atmospheric dust and ice particle loads. It was felt that these measurements are the ultimate ones to properly study the martian boundary layer from the surface to a few kilometers. Sounding from above requires an orbiting spacecraft with multichannel microwave spectrometers such as the instrument proposed for MO by a subset of the authors, a putative MESUR orbiter, and a proposed Discovery mission called MOES. Such an instrument can be built with less than 10 kg and use less than 15 W. The obvious advantage of this approach is that the entire atmosphere can be sounded for temperature and water vapor in a few hours with somewhat better than a scale height resolution. If a bigger mirror is used (greater than 30 cm) limb sounding geometry can be employed and half scale height resolution achieved to altitudes up to at least 60 km. Again, the measurements are immune to dust and ice loads. Water vapor sensitivity of 0.1 micrometer can be achieved (even with a nadir instrument) and temperature profiles retrieved to an accuracy of better than 2 K from the surface to about 60 km. Winds can be measured from the doppler shifts of CO lines in the limb sounding mode.

Description: The South Polar Residual Cap (SPRC) on Mars is an icy reservoir of CO2. If all the CO2 trapped in the SPRC were released to the atmosphere the mean annual global surface pressure would rise by approx. 20 Pa. Repeated MOC and HiRISE imaging of scarp retreat rates within the SPRC have led to the suggestion that the SPRC is losing mass. Estimates for the loss rate vary between 0.5 Pa per Mars Deacde to 13 Pa per Mars Decade. Assuming 80% of this loss goes directly to the atmosphere, and that the loss is monotonic, the global annual mean surface pressure should have increased between approx. 1-20 Pa since the Viking mission (19 Mars years ago).

Description: Mars reveals similar, yet also rather different, atmospheric circulation patterns compared to those on Earth. In both atmospheres, solar differential heating drives global Hadley circulation cells. However during solstice on Mars, its Hadley cells are hemispherically asymmetric: an intense, deep, cross-hemisphere single cell dominates with rising motion in the summer hemisphere and sinking motion in the winter hemisphere. Both planets also exhibit thermally indirect (i.e., eddy-driven) Ferrel circulation cells in middle and high latitudes. In addition, Earth and Mars exhibit distinctive large-scale orography and, in a broadly defined context, continentality. For Mars northern midlatitudes, Tharsis in the western hemisphere, and Arabia Terra and Elysium in the eastern hemisphere, are the primary large-scale topographic features. In the southern-midlatitudes, Tharsis and Argyre in the western hemisphere, and Hellas in the eastern hemisphere are the key topographic features which can influence large-scale circulation patterns. Such underlying orographic complexes not only cause significant latitudinal excursions of the seasonal mean westerly circumnavigating polar vortex but also significantly modulate the intensity and preferred geographic regions of traveling baroclinic weather systems.

Description: The South Polar Residual Cap (SPRC) on Mars is an icy reservoir of CO2. If all the CO2 trapped in the SPRC were released to the atmosphere the mean annual global surface pressure would rise by approximately 20 Pa. Repeated MOC and HiRISE imaging of scarp retreat within the SPRC led to suggestions that the SPRC is losing mass. Estimates for the loss rate vary between 0. 5 Pa per Mars Decade to 13 Pa per Mars Decade. Assuming 80% of this loss goes directly into the atmosphere, an estimate based on some modeling (Haberle and Kahre, 2010), and that the loss is monotonic, the global annual mean surface pressure should have increased between approximately 1-20 Pa since the Viking mission (approximately 20 Mars years ago). Surface pressure measurements by the Phoenix Lander only 2.5 Mars years ago were found to be consistent with these loss rates. Last year at this meeting we compared surface pressure data from the MSL mission through sol 360 with that from Viking Lander 2 (VL-2) for the same period to determine if the trend continues. The results were ambiguous. This year we have a full Mars year of MSL data to work with. Using the Ames GCM to compensate for dynamics and environmental differences, our analysis suggests that the mean annual pressure has decreased by approximately 8 Pa since Viking. This result implies that the SPRC has gained (not lost) mass since Viking. However, the estimated uncertainties in our analysis are easily at the 10 Pa level and possibly higher. Chief among these are the hydrostatic adjustment of surface pressure from grid point elevations to actual elevations and the simulated regional environmental conditions at the lander sites. For these reasons, the most reasonable conclusion is that there is no significant difference in the size of the atmosphere between now and Viking. This implies, but does not demand, that the mass of the SPRC has not changed since Viking. Of course, year-to-year variations are possible as implied by the Phoenix data. Given that there has been no unusual behavior in the climate system as observed by a variety of spacecraft at Mars since Phoenix, its seems more likely that the Phoenix data simply did not have a long enough record to accurately determine annual mean pressure changes as Haberle and Kahre (2010) cautioned. In the absence of a strong signal in the MSL data, we conclude that if the SPRC is loosing mass it is not going into the atmosphere reservoir.