Planetary Atmospheres
Cover Page/Proposal Summary
ROSS-00 NRA 00-OSS-01
Date Due: 4/28/2000
This proposal shall be used and disclosed for evaluation purposes only, and a copy of this Government notice shall be applied to any reproduction or abstract thereof. Any authorized restrictive notices that the submitter places on this proposal shall also be strictly complied with. Disclosure of this proposal for any reason outside the Government evaluation purposes shall be made only to the extent authorized by the Government. |
Proposal Type: New Proposal |
Proposal Category: Dynamics |
Major Equipment Proposal? No |
Do you intend to submit an Education/Public Outreach (E/PO) proposal? No |
Proposal Title: |
Water-Dust Coupling and Radiative-Dynamic Feedbacks in the Martian Atmosphere |
Abbreviated Proposal Title: |
Water-Dust Coupling in the Martian Atmosphere |
Principal Investigator: |
Dr. Howard Houben Space Physics Research Institute MS 245-3 NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 Phone: 650-604-3381 Fax: 650-604-6779 E-mail: houben@humbabe.arc.nasa.gov |
Signature | Date |
_____________________________________ | ____________ |
Co-Investigators and Collaborators: | |||
Type | Name | Affiliation | |
Sci Collab | Dr. Eric Jensen | NASA-Ames Research Center | ejensen@sky.arc.nasa.gov |
Proposal Summary:
There is a growing consensus as to details of the Martian annual water cycle based on full three- dimensional modeling of the planet's meteorology. The atmospheric transport is dominated by the cross-equatorial Hadley cell that moves more than a Gigaton of water per season from the summer hemisphere far into the winter hemisphere where it must snow out. Thus, high relative humidities, clouds, and precipitation are important features of Martian meteorology. (The widespread existence of water ice clouds has been increasingly recognized in data from Mars Global Surveyor and re-analyzed Viking observations.) As there is always more water (by mass) than dust in the Martian atmosphere, the water transport and precipitation cycle must control the atmospheric transport of dust over the long term. On the other hand, dust heating seems to be the dominant parameter that modulates the strength of the Hadley cell. The interaction between these two atmospheric tracers in terms of radiative-dynamic feedbacks is therefore a key to the Martian climate system. It is proposed that models that have been developed and used successfully in the study of the radiative, dynamical, and physical evolution of aerosols in the Earth's stratosphere be applied to the modeling of this intriguing problem.
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By submitting the proposal identified in this Cover Sheet/Proposal Summary in response to this NRA or AO, the Authorizing Official of the proposing institution (or the individual proposer if there is no proposing institution) as identified below:
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