Martian Water Ice Clouds During the 2018 Global Dust Storm as Observed by the ACS‐MIR Channel Onboard the Trace Gas Orbiter

Abstract

AbstractThe Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) instrument onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) European Space Agency‐Roscosmos mission began science operations in March 2018. ACS Mid‐InfraRed (MIR) channel notably provides solar occultation observations of the Martian atmosphere in the 2.3‐ to 4.2‐ m spectral range. Here, we use these observations to characterize water ice clouds before and during the MY 34 Global Dust Storm (GDS). We developed a method to detect water ice clouds with mean particle size 2 m and applied it to observations gathered between and . We observe a shift in water ice cloud maximum altitudes from about 60 km before the GDS to above 90 km during the storm. These very high altitude, small‐sized ( m) water ice clouds are more frequent during MY 34 compared to non‐GDS years at the same season. Particle size frequently decreases with altitude, both locally within a given profile and globally in the whole data set. We observe that the maximum altitude at which a given size is observed can increase during the GDS by several tens of kilometers for certain sizes. We notably notice some large water ice particles ( m) at surprisingly high altitudes during the GDS (50–70 km). These results suggest that GDS can significantly impact the formation and properties of high‐altitude water ice clouds as compared to the usual perihelion dust activity.