Lulu Li

and 9 more

MarsWRF, the general circulation model of Mars, is one of the most commonly used models to study the dust cycle in the Martian atmosphere. It has been widely used to study the mechanisms of dust storms and their effects on the Martian atmosphere. To better understand the ability of MarsWRF to simulate the dust cycle on Mars, this study assesses the current dust lifting schemes in the model, specifically the convective lifting and wind stress schemes. It is found that, by tuning lifting efficiency, the model with the convective lifting scheme can generally reproduce the seasonal variation of the mid-level atmospheric temperature (T15) but cannot reproduce the observed spatial distribution of dust devils, which exhibits non-homogeneous (uniform) distribution in the northern (southern) hemisphere. The model with the wind stress lifting scheme can generally capture the observed magnitude of T15 and column dust optical depth (CDOD) with properly tuned lifting efficiency and threshold drag velocity. There is a discrepancy in the assessment of modeling seasonal variations of dust with T15 and CDOD, which may be partly due to the observational uncertainties related to T15 and CDOD and the empirical modeling methods of Martian dust optical properties and radiative effect. For the spatial distribution of dust, there are significant simulation biases regardless of the tuning, which may be caused by the biases in the dust lifting process and large-scale atmospheric circulation. The analysis highlights that dust lifting schemes need further improvement to better represent the dust cycle and their impacts on Mars.

Chengyun Yang

and 3 more

Insight and other observations of the Martian surface at different locations have recorded the diurnal variation in surface pressure (Ps) with two rapid fluctuations that occur at dawn and dusk (around LT0800 and LT2000). These short-period surface pressure perturbations at specific local times are typically observed near Martian equinox. Similar phase-locked surface pressure fluctuations over most areas of the middle and low latitudes are simulated by the Martian General Circulation Model at the Dynamic Meteorology Laboratory (LMD). This phenomenon is thus likely to be global rather than local. By reconstructing the surface pressure variation from the horizontal mass flux, the pressure fluctuations in a sol can be attributed to the diurnal variation in the horizontal wind divergence and convergence in the Martain tropical troposphere in the GCM simulations. The background diurnal variation in Ps is related to the diurnal migrating tidal wind, while the enhanced convergence due to the overlap of the 4-hour and 6-hour tides before LT0800 and LT2000 is responsible for the Ps peaks occurring at dawn and twilgith. Although the amplitudes of the 4-hour and 6-hour tides are smaller than those of diurnal tides, the phases of these tides remain similar in the Martain troposphere, which suggests that the convergences and divergences due to 4 h/6 h tidal winds at different altitudes are in phase and together create a mass flux comparable to that induced by diurnal/semidiurnal components and lead to rapid pressure fluctuations.