CO on Mars: Comment on a Paper by Rosenqvist et al.

✍ Scribed by Donald M. Hunten

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 163 KB
• Volume: 101
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0019-1035
• DOI: 10.1006/icar.1993.1004

✦ Synopsis

The paper under discussion suggests either that the CO mixing ratio diminishes strongly with increasing height over several large volcanoes, but not in the free atmosphere, or that an absorbing mineral is present on the surface with coverage correlated with height. This note proposes as a third possibility a tiny instrumental error, possibly the presence of very faint wings to the instrumental profile which could be due to scattered light. Raising the continuum level by about (0.3 %) in the low-resolution spectra will give a more reasonable result of a height-independent mixing ratio. 1993 Academic Press, Inc.