Abstract
The authors and co-signers of the Terrestrial Planets Comparative Climatology (TPCC) mission concept white paper advocate that planetary science in the next decade would greatly benefit from comparatively studying the fundamental behavior of the atmospheres of Venus and Mars, contemporaneously and with the same instrumentation, to capture atmospheric response to the same solar forcing, and with a minimum of instrument-related variability. Thus, this white paper was created for the 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey process. It describes the science rationale for such a mission, and a mission concept that could achieve such a mission.
Highlights
We suggest a mission architecture and payload that would determine the noble gas content and isotopic ratios, including the D/H ratio, at Venus with sufficient accuracy to identify the timeline of Venus’ climatic evolution for comparison with Mars
Our concept would systematically “follow the energy” at Mars and Venus, in order to establish how solar forcing on the two atmospheric systems leads to the current balance of dynamical, chemical, and radiative processes responsible for each planet’s climatic state
Comparative climatology has been a subject of renewed interest over the last decade, as evidenced by a series of conferences devoted to the subject, resulting in a Comparative Climatology of the Terrestrial Planets book [7]
Summary
The authors and co-signers of the Terrestrial Planets Comparative Climatology (TPCC) mission concept white paper advocate that planetary science in the decade would greatly benefit from comparatively studying the fundamental behavior of the atmospheres of Venus and Mars, contemporaneously and with the same instrumentation, to capture atmospheric response to the same solar forcing, and with a minimum of instrument-related variability. Our concept would systematically “follow the energy” at Mars and Venus, in order to establish how solar forcing on the two atmospheric systems leads to the current balance of dynamical, chemical, and radiative processes responsible for each planet’s climatic state. This would include acquisition of the first global atmospheric wind profiles on either planet; global, continuous profiles of aerosols, gases, and water vapor at vertical resolutions higher than any previous mission; and regular UV and IR nightglow observations tracking global circulation on both planets. Either architecture is a timely alternative to independently developed and launched spacecraft payloads, which are more costly and difficult to inter-calibrate
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