Martian cloud climatology and life cycle extracted from Mars Express OMEGA spectral images

TL;DR

This study uses Mars Express OMEGA spectral images to create a detailed climatology of Martian water-ice clouds, analyzing their distribution, life cycle, and diurnal variations over multiple years.

Contribution

It introduces new cloud indices derived from spectral data, enabling detailed analysis of cloud distribution and diurnal cycles on Mars over seven years.

Findings

Denser clouds over Hellas Planitia, Lunae Planum, and volcanoes.

Diurnal modulation of cloud abundance by thermal tides.

Regional variations in cloud presence and dissipation patterns.

Abstract

We extracted a Martian water-ice cloud climatology from OMEGA data covering 7 Martian years (MY 26-32). We derived two products, the Reversed Ice Cloud Index (ICIR) and the Percentage of Cloudy Pixels (PCP), indicating the mean cloud thickness and nebulosity over a regular grid (1{\deg} longitude x 1{\deg} latitude x 1{\deg} Ls x 1 h Local Time). The ICIR has been shown to be a proxy of the water-ice column derived from the Mars Climate Database. The PCP confirms the location of the main cloud structures mapped with the ICIR, and gives a more accurate image of the cloud cover. We observed a denser cloud coverage over Hellas Planitia, Lunae Planum and over large volcanoes in the aphelion belt. For the first time, thanks to the fact that Mars Express is not in Sun-synchronous orbit, we can explore the cloud diurnal cycle at a given season by combining 7 years of observations. However, because of the eccentric orbit, the temporal coverage remains limited. Other limitations of the dataset are its small size, the difficult distinction between ice clouds and frosts, and the impact of surface albedo on data uncertainty. We could nevertheless study the diurnal cloud life cycle by averaging the data over larger regions: from specific topographic features (covering a few degrees in longitude and latitude) up to large climatic bands (all longitudes). We found that in the tropics around northern summer solstice, the diurnal thermal tide modulates the abundance of clouds, which is reduced around noon. At northern midlatitudes, clouds corresponding to the edge of the north polar hood are observed mainly in the morning and around noon during northern winter (Ls=260-30{\deg}). Over Chryse Planitia, low lying morning fogs dissipate earlier and earlier in the afternoon during northern winter. Over Argyre, clouds are present over all daytime during two periods, around Ls = 30 and 160{\deg}.