The influence of global dust storms on the mean seasonal daily insolations at the Martian surface

✍ Scribed by E. Hemelrijck

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 341 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-0794
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00116792

✦ Synopsis

In this paper, we compare changes in the mean seasonal daily insolations at the Martian surface caused by global dust storms characterized by various atmospheric optical thickness (7). The calculations, made for optical depths equal to 0, 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, are based on the assumption of planet encircling storms lasting one season or one year. The variations in the latitudinal and seasonal surface insolation distributions are important, mainly at the poles where e.g. the mean annual and summer daily insolations decrease by nearly a factor of 3000 as r goes from 0 to 3.0. At equatorial latitudes the corresponding loss is much smaller, reaching a value of approximately 40. Concerning the mean wintertime solar radiations it is found that the decrease is even more spectacular, especially at high latitudes.