ExoMars TGO/NOMAD‐UVIS vertical profiles of ozone: Part 1 – Seasonal variation and comparison to water

Patel, M. R.; Sellers, G.; Mason, J.; Holmes, J.A.; Brown, M. A. J.; Lewis, S. R.; Rajendran, K.; Streeter, P. M.; Marriner, C.; Hathi, B. D.; Slade, D. J.; Leese, M. R.; Wolff, M. J.; Khayat, A. S. J.; Smith, M. D.; Aoki, S.; Piccialli, A.; Vandaele, A. C.; Robert, S.; Daerden, F.; Thomas, I. R.; Ristic, B.; Willame, Y.; Depiesse, C.; Bellucci, G. and Lopez‐Moreno, J.‐J. (2021). ExoMars TGO/NOMAD‐UVIS vertical profiles of ozone: Part 1 – Seasonal variation and comparison to water. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 126(11), article no. e2021JE006837.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2021je006837

Abstract

We present ∼1.5 Mars Years (MY) of ozone vertical profiles, covering L_S = 163° in MY34 to L_S = 320° in MY35, a period which includes the 2018 global dust storm. Since April 2018, the Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVIS) channel of the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) instrument aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has observed the vertical, latitudinal and seasonal distributions of ozone. Around perihelion, the relative abundance of both ozone and water (from coincident NOMAD measurements) increases with decreasing altitude below ∼40 km. Around aphelion, localised decreases in ozone abundance exist between 25-35 km coincident with the location of modelled peak water abundances. High latitude (> ± 55°), high altitude (40-55 km) equinoctial ozone enhancements are observed in both hemispheres (L_S ∼350-40°) and discussed in the companion paper to this work (Khayat et al, 2021). The descending branch of the main Hadley cell shapes the observed ozone distribution at L_S = 40-60°, with the possible signature of a northern hemisphere thermally indirect cell identifiable from L_S = 40-80°. Morning terminator observations show elevated ozone abundances with respect to evening observations, with average ozone abundances between 20 and 40 km an order of magnitude higher at sunrise compared to sunset, attributed to diurnal photochemical partitioning along the line of sight between ozone and O or fluctuations in water abundance. The ozone retrievals presented here provide the most complete global description of Mars ozone vertical distributions to date as a function of season and latitude.

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