The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Investigating the ozone cycle on Mars using GCM modelling and data assimilation Conference Item

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Holmes, James A. Lewis, Steve R. Patel, Manish R.
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. Introduction: In this work we use atmospheric modelling and data assimilation to study the annual ozone cycle. There are a multitude of current issues which can be investigated including the chemical stability of the atmosphere , the polar vortices and habitability. OH (part of the odd hydrogen family HOx and produced from the photolysis of water vapour) is known to play a key role in the stability of the atmosphere and is also a major catalytic destructor of ozone. This chemical species has only recently been detected by Clancy et al. (2013) and for further studies a possible option is to use ozone as a tracer for OH. Ozone has also been found to be quasi-passive in the polar night (Lefèvre et al. 2004) due primarily to the lack of daylight hours and a negligible amount of HOx radicals present at this time of the year. The dynamics associated with the northern polar vortex can therefore be traced using the ozone abundance. The UV flux reaching the ground, an important parameter for the habitability of Mars, is controlled by the atmospheric ozone. A more realistic ozone cycle reduces the uncertainties of the amount of UV radiation reaching the surface of Mars. Further analysis of the ozone cycle can also provide a broader understanding of the Martian atmospheric chemistry. Providing a consistent temporal and spatial agreement between models and observations of ozone is also of great benefit in furthering the understanding of important photochemical processes in the Martian atmosphere. Seasonal variations, that are governed primarily by the hygropause level at different times of the year (Clancy and Nair, 1996), have been known from the first observations of ozone by Mariner 9. Ozone on Mars is primarily observed by the strong and wide absorption band centred at 255 nm detectable by UV spectrometers (Perrier et al., 2006). It can also be retrieved at 9.7 μm where IR spectrometers can ascertain measurements (Fast et al., 2006) and indirectly in the 1.27 μm O2 (a
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Alternate Webpage(s)	http://oro.open.ac.uk/39344/1/holmes_oxford2014.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article