The temperature on Mars rises during the day and at midnight. Free Technical Library News

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The temperature on Mars rises during the day and at midnight

21.06.2013

Scientists believe clouds of ice and water vapor hold the key to Martian thermal fluctuations.
NASA researchers from Pasadena, California, studying the Red Planet with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have found that the temperature of Mars's atmosphere regularly rises and falls not once, but twice a day.

"We noticed that the maximum temperature is not only in the middle of the day, which is natural and logical, but it also rises after midnight," said Armin Kleinboil of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Kleinboil is the lead author of a report on the new research that led to these conclusions. Temperature fluctuations occur within about 30 degrees Celsius. Planetary scientists have explored the entire temperature range of day and night across Mars. As a result of observations using the Mars Climate Sounder instrument, it was found that this pattern is dominant on a global scale and is observed all year round. A report on these studies is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Global changes in wind direction, fluctuations in temperature and pressure are repeated from day to day and are called atmospheric tides. Unlike terrestrial sea tides, they are driven by temperature differences between day and night. On Earth, there are also atmospheric tides, but they are not so noticeable with us due to the small temperature difference in the lower layers of the atmosphere. On Mars, which has an atmosphere of only about one percent of Earth's, they control short-term changes in temperature across the planet. Temperature peaks that occur once a day are called "diurnal", and twice a day "semidiurnal".

The semidiurnal cycle on Mars was first recorded back in the 70s of the last century. But then it was considered that it was caused by dusty seasons, when strong winds begin to blow during the first summer months, which raise millions of tons of brown-red dust hundreds of meters up. “We were surprised to find these significant twice-daily temperature fluctuations during dust-free periods,” Kleinboil said. “While the diurnal temperature spike on Mars has been known for many decades, the discovery of a regular semi-diurnal nighttime maximum without any major dust storms was quite suddenly".

The scientist and four of his co-authors managed to find the answer - the whole thing turned out to be in the Martian water-ice clouds, which are abundant in the atmosphere during most of the year. They are mainly observed in the equatorial region at altitudes of 10 to 30 kilometers, due to the absorption of infrared light emitted by the Martian surface during the daytime. These are fairly transparent clouds, similar to thin cirrus clouds on Earth. However, the heat accumulated in these clouds is enough to warm the atmosphere every day.

"We think of Mars as a cold, dry world with very little water. But there is actually more water vapor in the atmosphere of Mars than in Earth's upper atmosphere," Kleinboil said. "Now we know we need to take a closer look at water-ice clouds, if we want to understand how the Martian atmosphere works."

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