Planetary atmosphere observation analysis

Abstract:

The loss of water from Mars to space is thought to result from the transport of water to the upper atmosphere, where it is dissociated to hydrogen and escapes the planet. Recent observations have suggested large, rapid seasonal intrusions of water into the upper atmosphere, boosting the hydrogen abundance. We use the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter to characterize the water distribution by altitude. Water profiles during the 2018–2019 southern spring and summer stormy seasons show that high-altitude water is preferentially supplied close to perihelion, and supersaturation occurs even when clouds are present. This implies that the potential for water to escape from Mars is higher than previously thought.

Abstract:

Determining the abundances of chemicals species and their isotopic ratios is fundamental to understand how and when the planets formed, in what conditions and what processes happen in their atmosphere. Jupiter still has some unanswered questions in this regard. The apparent low-temperature origin of the elements that formed the planet, the detailed meteorological processes that happen in its atmosphere remain largely unknown and the chemistry responsible for the colours of clouds of Jupiter is one of its oldest mysteries (Taylor et al., 2006). With this work, we hope to contribute to the progress of unravelling some of these questions.We used the observations of Jupiter from the ESA mission Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) (Kessler et al., 1996) in the 793.65-3125 cm-1 (3.2-12.6 µm) region using the Short-Wave Spectrometer (SWS) (de Graauw et al., 1996). Our work is focused on the 793.65-1492.54 cm-1 (6.7-12.6 µm) region of the spectrum. Even though this data set is old, it was an important step in the study of Jupiter’s atmosphere and with the advancements in atmospheric models and line data, we argue that it warrants a revisit and reanalysis.Figure 1: Plot of ISO-SWS data and used in this work and model fit.Firstly, we used the NEMESIS radiative transfer suite (Irwin et al., 2008) to reproduce the results from Encrenaz et al., 1999 as a way to verify the validity of our method. This study is done using the CIRS NEMESIS template as a base adapted to the ISO-SWS data.  We used correlated k-tables compiled for NH3, PH3, 12CH3D, 12CH4, 13CH4, C2H2, C2H6, CH3Br, CH3OH, HCOOH and SF6, with our results showing good agreement [Fig.1].Having verified our method, we present here our first results of the study of abundances of 12CH3D, 12CH4, 13CH4, C2H2 and C2H6 of Jupiter’s atmosphere as well as our initial study of the pressure-temperature profile of Jupiter. We use the NEMESIS suite to determine the abundances as a function of altitude and retrieve the pressure-temperature profile. We compare our results with the profiles and abundances from Neimann et al., 1998 and Fletcher et al., 2016 with the aim to constrain the number of possible best fit profiles.We also present our initial study the H/D and 12C/13C isotopic ratio of the Jovian atmosphere from the abundances of 12CH3D, 13CH4 and 12CH4 following the methodology from Fouchet et al., 2000.Despite the ISO-SWS data used being global, with this preliminary work we hope to further advance the knowledge about the chemical processes that happen in Jupiter, as well as the chemical and temperature vertical distribution. As future work, we expect to extend our frequency domain to the range of ISO/SWS observations and study the 15N/14N ratio. Referencesde Graauw et al., Observing with the ISO short-wavelength spectrometer, A&A 315, L49-L54, 1996 Encrenaz et al., The atmospheric composition and structure of Jupiter and Saturn form ISO observations: a preliminary review, Planetary and Space Science 47, 1225-1242, 1999 Fletcher et al., Mid-infrared mapping of Jupiter’s temperatures, aerosol opacity and chemical distributions with IRTF/TEXES, Icarus 278, 128–161, 2016 Fouchet et al., ISO-SWS Observations of Jupiter: Measurement of the Ammonia Tropospheric Profile and of the 15N/14N Isotopic Ratio, Icarus 143, 223–243, 2000 Irwin et al., The NEMESIS planetary atmosphere radiative transfer and retrieval tool, Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer 109, 1136–1150, 2008 Kessler et al., The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) mission, A&A 315, L27, 1996 Neimann et al., The composition of the Jovian atmosphere as determined by the Galileo probe mass spectrometer, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 103(E10):22831-45, 1998 Taylor et al., Jupiter, The Planet, Satellites and Magnetosphere, Ch.4, Cambridge Planetary Science, Eds. Bagenal, Dowling, McKinnon, 2006  AcknowledgementsWe acknowledge support from the Portuguese Fundação Para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (ref. PTDC/FIS-AST/29942/2017) through national funds and by FEDER through COMPETE 2020 (ref. POCI-01-0145 FEDER-007672).

Abstract:

A number of images and analyses have demonstrated the presence of hazes and clouds in the atmosphere of the ice giants. While the formation of hazes is attributed to the methane dissociation in the high stratosphere by solar UV and energetic particles that leads to a number of chemical reactions (e.g. Moses et al., Icarus, 307, 2018), the observed clouds are the result of the condensation of CH4 and H2S in the troposphere (e.g. Irwin et al., Nature Astronomy, 2018). However, the lack of current limb observations taken at different tangent heights limits our knowledge about the vertical structure and optical properties of these aerosols. In this work, we will present different results obtained with a coupled cloud-haze microphysical model (Toledo et at., Icarus, 333, 2019; Toledo et at., Icarus, 350, 2020) used to constrain the particle size, density, vertical structure and time scale of aerosols in the ice giants. Our simulations show, among other results, high precipitation rates at pressures greater than 0.5 bar and timescales ranging from years (for the haze) to a few hours (CH4 clouds).