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E. C. Newman, O. B. Toon (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Dust is an important constituent of the Martian atmosphere. However, its effect on the radiative balance of the planet is not thoroughly understood and has not been well constrained. Past studies have attempted to determine the infrared optical constants of the dust by comparing Martian spectra with those obtained from laboratory measurements of Earth minerals such as montmorillonite and palagonite. This method, however, has not been entirely successful. We have chosen to approach the problem differently, using Mars as the laboratory and trying to fit synthetic spectra to the observations. A multiple stream radiative transfer code together with a Mie code are used to calculate IR optical constants. These are constrained by comparison to both Mariner 9 IRIS spectra and MGS/TES spectra.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: elinor@colorado.edu