High-altitude gravity waves in the Martian thermosphere observed by MAVEN/NGIMS

High-altitude gravity waves in the Martian thermosphere observed by MAVEN/NGIMS and modeled by a gravity wave scheme

Erdal Yi?it, Scott L. England, Guiping Liu, Alexander S. Medvedev, Paul R. Mahaffy, Takeshi Kuroda, Bruce M. Jakosky
(Submitted on 13 Aug 2015)

First high-altitude observations of gravity wave (GW)-induced CO2 density perturbations in the Martian thermosphere retrieved from NASA’s NGIMS instrument on board the MAVEN satellite are presented and interpreted using the extended GW parameterization of Yi\u{g}it et al. [2008] and the Mars Climate Database as an input. Observed relative density perturbations between 180-220 km of 20-40 % demonstrate appreciable local time, latitude, and altitude variations. Modeling for the spatiotemporal conditions of the MAVEN observations suggests that GWs can directly propagate from the lower atmosphere to the thermosphere, produce appreciable dynamical effects, and likely contribute to the observed fluctuations. Modeled effects are somewhat smaller than the observed but their highly variable nature is in qualitative agreement with observations. Possible reasons for discrepancies between modeling and measurements are discussed.

Comments: Accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). Special section: First Results from the MAVEN Mission to Mars
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph); Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
Cite as: arXiv:1508.03095 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1508.03095v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Erdal Yi?it
[v1] Thu, 13 Aug 2015 01:10:57 GMT (8413kb,D)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.03095