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| Martian Weather: Approximately 5 Mars Years of MOC and MARCI Observations |
| Presentation Time: Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. - 10:40 a.m. |
Bruce Cantor1, M. C. Malin1
1Malin Space Science Systems. |
| Presentation Number: 17.01 |
From its nearly circular, polar orbit, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft provides the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) a daily global view of Mars. This permits MARCI observations to extend the ~5 Mars year record of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) global, visible-wavelength observations of Martian meteorological events. It was fortunate that MGS lasted long enough to provide 3 weeks of overlapping coverage with MARCI. During this period in northern summer, the peak water-ice opacity of the orographic clouds over Olympus Mons increased from 0.7 to 1.4 between 1400 and 1500 LMST.
MARCI also extended the monitoring of the year-to-year repeatable northern summer/southern winter dust storm and water-ice cloud phenomena observed by Cantor et al. (2002). As forecast, all three atmospheric events (Melas dust storm, spiral storm in the caldera of Arsia Mons, and the northern hemisphere extratropical annular water-ice cloud) reoccurred again in 2006-2007. The onset of the annular cloud appears to be the most highly repeatable from year-to-year, suggesting a strong thermal and/or topographic control. The Arsia Mons spiral storm occurred earlier this Mars year (Ls=150), while the Melas storm occurred later (Ls=146) than in previous years.
In terms of large-scale atmospheric events, MOC (2001) and MARCI (2007) were fortunate to observe the formation of planet obscuring dust cloud events. Due to past observational limitations, such events have been called "Global" or "Planet-Encircling" dust storms. MOC and MARCI observations clearly show such events are not single storms, but are comprised of a number of regional and local dust storms that appear to be causally linked. These storms loft dust high into the atmosphere, where it is quickly circulated around the planet, obscuring the surface from orbital views for weeks to months at a time.
This research was supported by NASA/JPL contracts NNH07CC11C and 1275776. |
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