| Title: |
Water Vapor Vertical Distribution on Mars After Six Years of TGO/NOMAD Solar Occultations: 2. Cross‐Validation Within TGO and Comparison With MPCM |
| Authors: |
Brines, A.; López‐Valverde, M. A.; González‐Galindo, F.; Aoki, S.; Fedorova, A.; Belyaev, D.; Forget, F.; Vos, E.; Montmessin, F.; Funke, B.; Lopez‐Moreno, J. J.; Rodriguez‐Gomez, J.; Daerden, F.; Thomas, I. R.; Trompet, L.; Modak, A.; Villanueva, G. L.; Patel, M. R.; Bellucci, G.; Vandaele, A. C. |
| Publication Year: |
2026 |
| Collection: |
The Open University: Open Research Online (ORO) |
| Description: |
This is the second part of an investigation of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere using solaroccultation observations by the Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery (NOMAD) spectrometer on boardthe ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Following the analysis of six Earth years of NOMAD observations performedin the first part, a cross‐validation between NOMAD and ACS results is presented, showing global as well asprofile‐by‐profile comparisons. The results reveal an overall good agreement between different teams andinstruments, taking into account the different retrieval methodologies. In order to compare with modelpredictions, we perform an exhaustive analysis of the water vapor simulated by Mars Planetary Climate Model(MPCM). It shows that the MPCM reproduces most of the water vapor climatological features observed in theatmosphere. However, several discrepancies between model and observations are noticed. Some of these arepossibly related to the vertical distribution of dust and its effect on the global circulation and on the water vaporvertical transport. Other data‐model differences found at 60 km seem to be related to discrepancies on the waterice cloud formation in the MPCM. We include a cluster analysis of Martian water vapor vertical profiles for thefirst time. This technique applied to MPCM and NOMAD water vapor retrievals reveal distinct groups ofprofiles being representative of specific seasons and latitudinal regions, similarly distributed in both model andobservations. Moreover, it allows us to provide a simplified water vapor climatology, useful to detect out‐of‐season events and biases in the retrieval processes. |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| File Description: |
text/xml; application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
https://oro.open.ac.uk/108555/1/2025JE009191.xml; https://oro.open.ac.uk/108555/2/108555.pdf; Brines, A.; López‐Valverde, M. A.; González‐Galindo, F.; Aoki, S.; Fedorova, A.; Belyaev, D.; Forget, F.; Vos, E.; Montmessin, F.; Funke, B.; Lopez‐Moreno, J. J.; Rodriguez‐Gomez, J.; Daerden, F.; Thomas, I. R.; Trompet, L.; Modak, A.; Villanueva, G. L.; Patel, M. R. ; Bellucci, G. and Vandaele, A. C. (2026). Water Vapor Vertical Distribution on Mars After Six Years of TGO/NOMAD Solar Occultations: 2. Cross‐Validation Within TGO and Comparison With MPCM. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 131(2), article no. e2025JE009191. |
| DOI: |
10.1029/2025je009191 |
| Availability: |
https://oro.open.ac.uk/108555/; https://oro.open.ac.uk/108555/1/2025JE009191.xml; https://oro.open.ac.uk/108555/2/108555.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2025je009191 |
| Rights: |
cc_by_nc_nd_4 |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.C59FBC56 |
| Database: |
BASE |