31st Annual Meeting of the DPS, October 1999
Session 75. Mars Atmosphere: Dust
Contributed Oral Parallel Session, Friday, October 15, 1999, 2:40-3:30pm, Sala Plenaria

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[75.03] A Method of correcting spectroscopic Martian water vapor abundances for dust opacity

D.M. Hunten, A.L. Sprague, L.R. Doose (LPL, University of Arizona)

A method is presented to allow for the effects of dust opacity on the derivation of water-vapor abundances from observed spectral absorption lines. We show that the dust opacity can be inferred by use of limb-to-limb measurements of a CO2 band. Ideally, simultaneous CO2 and water vapor measurements at the same location should be obtained; in practice, these two measurements may have to be made sequentially. The effects of the dust opacity are computed by a doubling-adding program that has been applied to many problems, most recently the analysis of data obtained by the cameras on the Mars Pathfinder lander. This analysis has also yielded the phase function of the dust.


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