First results on Martian carbon monoxide from Herschel/HIFI observations

Abstract

We report on the initial analysis of Herschel/HIFI carbon monoxide (CO) observations of the Martian atmosphere performed between 11 and 16 April 2010. We selected the (7-6) rotational transitions of the isotopes ^{13}CO at 771 GHz and C^{18}O at 768 GHz in order to retrieve the mean vertical profile of temperature and the mean volume mixing ratio of carbon monoxide. The derived temperature profile agrees within less than 5 K with general circulation model (GCM) predictions up to an altitude of 45 km, however, show about 12-15 K lower values at 60 km. The CO mixing ratio was determined as 980 \pm 150 ppm, in agreement with the 900 ppm derived from Herschel/SPIRE observations in November 2009.

Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics (special issue on HIFI first results); minor changes to match published version

References in corpus (3)

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• Mesospheric vertical thermal structure and winds on Venus from HHSMT CO spectral-line observations
• Water production in comet 81P/Wild 2 as determined by Herschel/HIFI

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