Water Vapor Vertical Profiles on Mars in Dust Storms Observed by TGO/NOMAD

It has been suggested that dust storms efficiently transport water vapor from the near-surface to the middle atmosphere on Mars. Knowledge of the water vapor vertical profile during dust storms is important to understand water escape. During Martian Year 34, two dust storms occurred on Mars: a global dust storm (June to mid-September 2018) and a regional storm (January 2019). Here we present water vapor vertical profiles in the periods of the two dust storms (Ls = 162–260° and Ls = 298–345°) from the solar occultation measurements by Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) onboard ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). We show a significant increase of water vapor abundance in the middle atmosphere (40–100 km) during the global dust storm. The water enhancement rapidly occurs following the onset of the storm (Ls~190°) and has a peak at the most active period (Ls~200°). Water vapor reaches very high altitudes (up to 100 km) with a volume mixing ratio of ~50 ppm. The water vapor abundance in the middle atmosphere shows high values consistently at 60°S-60°N at the growth phase of the dust storm (Ls = 195°–220°), and peaks at latitudes greater than 60°S at the decay phase (Ls = 220°–260°). This is explained by the seasonal change of meridional circulation: from equinoctial Hadley circulation (two cells) to the solstitial one (a single pole-to-pole cell). We also find a conspicuous increase of water vapor density in the middle atmosphere at the period of the regional dust storm (Ls = 322–327°), in particular at latitudes greater than 60°S. ©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
S. A. is >Charge de Recherches> of the F.R.S.-FNRS. ExoMars is a space mission of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos. The NOMAD experiment is led by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (IASBBIRA), assisted by Co-PI teams from Spain (IAA-CSIC), Italy (INAF-IAPS), and the United Kingdom (Open University). This project acknowledges funding by the Belgian Science Policy Office, with the financial and contractual coordination by the European Space Agency Prodex Office (PEA 4000103401 and 4000121493), by the Spanish MICINN through its Plan Nacional and by European funds under grants PGC2018-101836-B-I00 and ESP2017-87143-R (MINECO/FEDER), as well as by UK Space Agency through grants ST/R005761/1, ST/P001262/1, ST/R001405/1, and ST/S00145X/1 and Italian Space Agency through grant 2018-2-HH.0. The IAA/CSIC team acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the >Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa> award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). This work was supported by the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique-FNRS under grant numbers 30442502 (ET_HOME) and T.0171.16 (CRAMIC) and Belgian Science Policy Office BrainBe SCOOP Project. U.S. investigators were supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Canadian investigators were supported by the Canadian Space Agency. The results retrieved from the NOMAD measurements used in this article are available on the BIRA-IASB data repository: http://repository.aeronomie.be/?doi= 10.18758/71021054 (Aoki et al., 2019).