Temperatures and Winds in the Martian Mesosphere from CO2 Clouds Observations and GCM Simulations

F. González-Galindo (1) , Anni Määttänen (2) , A. Spiga (3, 4) , François Forget (3, 4)

1 IAA - Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
2 PLANETO - LATMOS
3 IPSL - Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace
4 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)

We use a ground-to-exosphere General CirculationModel, the LMDMGCM (Forget et al., 1999; Gonzalez-Galindo et al., 2009), to study the temperatures and winds in the Martian mesosphere and compare with the information provided by the observations of mesospheric clouds. This will allow to validate the behavior of the model in the mesosphere and, more important, to gain insight into the physical processes that are behind the distribution of these clouds.

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]; Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]

F. González-Galindo, Anni Määttänen, A. Spiga, François Forget. Temperatures and Winds in the Martian Mesosphere from CO2 Clouds Observations and GCM Simulations. Fourth International Workshop on the Mars Atmosphere: Modelling and Observations, Feb 2011, Paris, France. pp.406-408. ⟨hal-00642922⟩