Martian water ice clouds during the 2018 global dust storm as observed by the ACS-MIR channel onboard the Trace Gas Orbiter

Abstract

The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) instrument onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) ESA-Roscosmos mission began science operations in March 2018. ACS Mid InfraRed (MIR) channel notably provides solar occultation observations of the martian atmosphere in the 2.3 – 4.2 μm spectral range. Here we use these observations to characterize water ice clouds before and during the MY 34 Global Dust Storm (GDS). We developed a method to detect water ice clouds with mean particle size ≤ 2 μm, and applied it to observations gathered between Ls = 165◦ and Ls = 243◦. We observe a shift in water ice clouds maximum altitudes from about 60 km before the GDS to above 90 km during the storm. These very high altitude, small-sized (reff ≤ 0.3 μm) water ice clouds are more frequent during MY34 compared to non- GDS years at the same season. Particle size frequently decreases with altitude, both locally within a given profile and globally in the whole dataset. We observe that the maximum altitude at which a given size is observed can increase during the GDS by several tens of km for certain sizes. We notably notice some large water ice particles (reff ≥ 1.5 μm) at surprisingly high altitudes during the GDS (50 – 70 km). These results suggest that GDS can significantly impact the formation and properties of high altitude water ice clouds as compared to the usual perihelion dust activity.