Astroclimate at San Pedro M\'artir I: 2004-2008 Seeing Statistics from the TMT Site Testing Data

TL;DR

This study provides detailed statistics on atmospheric seeing at San Pedro Martir from 2004 to 2008, highlighting seasonal variations, the dominance of ground-layer turbulence, and potential climate influences on seeing conditions.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive multi-year seeing analysis at San Pedro Martir using combined MASS-DIMM data, revealing seasonal patterns and the impact of climate change.

Findings

Median seeing: 0.78 arcsec (DIMM), 0.37 arcsec (MASS)

Ground layer contributes most to total seeing

Summer has the best seeing conditions

Abstract

We present comprehensive seeing statistics for the San Pedro M\'artir site derived from the Thirty Meter Telescope site selection data. The observations were obtained between 2004 and 2008 with a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM) and a Multi Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS) combined instrument (MASS--DIMM). The parameters that are statistically analised here are: whole atmosphere seeing -measured by the DIMM-; free atmosphere seeing --measured by the MASS--; and ground-layer seeing (GL) --difference between the total and free-atmosphere seeing--. We made a careful data coverage study along with statistical distributions of simultaneous MASS--DIMM seeing measurements, in order to investigate the nightly, monthly, seasonal, annual and global behaviour, as well as possible hourly seeing trends. Although this campaign covers five years, the sampling is uneven, being 2006 and 2007 the best sampled years in terms of seasonal coverage. The overall results yield a median seeing of 0.78 (DIMM), 0.37 (MASS) and 0.59 arcsec (GL). The strongest contribution to the whole atmosphere seeing comes, therefore, from a strong ground layer. We find that the best season is summer, while the worst one is winter, in accordance with previous studies. It is worth noting that the best yearly results are correlated with the best sampled years. The hourly analysis shows that there is no statistically significant tendency of seeing degradation towards dawn. The seeing values are slightly larger than those reported before. This may be caused by climate changes.