Observations of Martian surface winds at the Viking Lander 1 site
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle (USA)
Partial failure of the wind instrumentation on the Viking Lander 1 (VL1) in the Martian subtropics (22.5{degree}N) has limited previous analyses of meteorological data for this site. The authors describe a method for reconstructing surface winds using data from the partially failed sensor and present and analyze a time series of wind, pressure, and temperature at the site covering 350 Mars days (sols). At the beginning of the mission during early summer, winds were controlled by regional topography, but they soon underwent a transition to a regime controlled by the Hadley circulation. Diurnal and semidiurnal wind oscillations and synoptic variations have been analyzed and compared with the corresponding variations at the Viking Lander 2 middle latitude site (48{degree}N). Diurnal wind oscillations were controlled primarily by regional topography and boundary layer forcing, although a global mode may have been influencing them during two brief episodes. Semidiurnal wind oscillations were controlled by the westward propagating semidiurnal tide from sol 210 onward. Comparison of the synoptic variations at the two sites suggests that the same eastward propagating wave trains were present at both sites, at least following the first 1977 great dust storm, but discordant inferred zonal wave numbers and phase speeds at the two sites cast doubt on the zonal wave numbers deduced from analyses of combined wind and pressure data, particularly at the VL1 site where the signal to noise ratio of the dominant synoptic waves is relatively small.
- OSTI ID:
- 5453144
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9001119-; CODEN: JGREA; TRN: 91-023782
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States), Vol. 95:B9; Conference: 4. international conference on Mars, Tucson, AZ (United States), 10-13 Jan 1990; ISSN 0148-0227
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
GENERAL PHYSICS
MARS PLANET
PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES
WIND
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DATA ANALYSIS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
METEOROLOGY
SURFACES
TOPOGRAPHY
VARIATIONS
VIKING SPACE PROBES
ATMOSPHERES
EVALUATION
PLANETS
SPACE VEHICLES
VEHICLES
640107* - Astrophysics & Cosmology- Planetary Phenomena