NASA Announces August 4 News Briefing On MRO Science Finding |
NASA Announces August 4 News Briefing On MRO Science Finding |
Aug 3 2011, 03:55 PM
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 293 |
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Aug 5 2011, 01:02 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Possibly a naive question, but do any of the currently active orbiters have an instrument that can determine atmospheric humidity levels with high spatial resolution?
I'm sure there's not, but those would seem to be the root requirements for exactly the sort of gizmo you'd need to catch these things in the act & prove they're made by flowing mud. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Aug 5 2011, 01:07 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 293 Joined: 29-August 06 From: Columbia, MD Member No.: 1083 |
do any of the currently active orbiters have an instrument that can determine atmospheric humidity levels with high spatial resolution? Mars Climate Sounder onboard MRO can detect water vapor (and thus you can calculate humidity as it detects temperature also). But it probably wouldn't work for this scenario. It's not ideal for detecting these values in the lowest layers in the atmosphere and whatever water comes out of these features probably won't significantly effect the water vapor concentration at higher altitudes. |
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Aug 15 2011, 03:19 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 50 Joined: 16-January 06 Member No.: 646 |
Mars Climate Sounder onboard MRO can detect water vapor (and thus you can calculate humidity as it detects temperature also). But it probably wouldn't work for this scenario. It's not ideal for detecting these values in the lowest layers in the atmosphere and whatever water comes out of these features probably won't significantly effect the water vapor concentration at higher altitudes. Unfortunately, the MCS water detection capability has been compromised by less-than-ideal behavior of the "in band" water channels (i don't remember their filter names). As such, its capability remains theoretical. Hopefully, EMCS on ExoMars-TGO will be able to avoid this problem. CRISM measures an integrated water column on a regular basis (i.e., Smith et al., 2009; http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009JGRE..11400D03S). However, one would really want to get the sporadic limb "scans" by CRISM to get a better sense of humidity levels in the atmosphere. These have been analyzed (and still are) by Smith et al., but only published in abstracts at the moment. Also, analogous to the issue pointed out by Drskywxlt for thermal sounding, the lower scale height is difficult to resolve in a meaningful way for water by CRISM (radiation field is "thermalized" by multiple scattering in the CRISM regime). The best hope for orbital, vertically-resolved water vapor measurements would be sub-mm/microwave sounding, which are basically insensitive to the aerosol components in the atmosphere, at least in terms of confounding water line analyses. |
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