A Two Martian Years Survey of Water Ice Clouds on Mars With ACS Onboard TGO

Abstract

AbstractThe middle infrared (MIR) channel of the atmospheric chemistry suite (ACS) instrument onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter ESA‐Roscosmos mission has performed Solar occultation measurements of the Martian atmosphere in the 2.3–4.2 μm spectral range since March 2018, which now covers two Martian years (MY). We use the methodology previously developed for the study of the MY 34 global dust storm (GDS) (Stcherbinine et al., 2020, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019je006300) to monitor the properties (effective radii, extinction, and altitude) of the Martian water ice clouds over the first two Martian years covered by ACS‐MIR. The observations encompass the period Ls = 163° in MY 34 to Ls = 181° in MY 36. We determine that the typical altitude of the clouds varies by 20–40 km between the summer and winter, with a maximum extension up to 80 km during summer in the midlatitudes. Similarly, we also note that for a limited temporal range, the altitude of the clouds also varies by 20–40 km between the polar regions and the midlatitudes. We also compare observations acquired during the MY 34 GDS to observations from the same period in MY 35, using the latter as a reference to characterize the effects of this GDS on the clouds' properties. In addition, we compare our retrievals with the predictions of the Mars planetary climate model, which shows a reasonable agreement overall for the altitude of the clouds, although the model usually predicts lower altitudes for the top of the clouds.