Analysis of Venus Express optical extinction due to aerosols in the upper haze of Venus
Abstract
Observations by the SPICAV/SOIR instruments aboard Venus Express (VEx) have revealed that the Upper Haze of Venus is populated by two particle modes, as reported by Wilquet et al. (J. Geophys. Res., 114, E00B42, 2009; Icarus 217, 2012). Gao et al. (In press, Icarus, 2013) posit that the large mode is made up of cloud particles that have diffused upwards from the cloud deck below, while the smaller mode is generated by the in situ nucleation of meteoric dust. They tested this hypothesis by using version 3.0 of the Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmospheres, first developed by Turco et al. (J. Atmos. Sci., 36, 699-717, 1979) and upgraded to version 3.0 by Bardeen et al. (The CARMA 3.0 microphysics package in CESM, Whole Atmosphere Working Group Meeting, 2011). Using the meteoric dust production profile of Kalashnikova et al. (Geophys. Res. Lett., 27, 3293-3296, 2000), the sulfur/sulfate condensation nuclei production profile of Imamura and Hashimoto (J. Atmos. Sci., 58, 3597-3612, 2001), and sulfuric acid vapor production profile of Zhang et al. (Icarus, 217, 714-739, 2012), they numerically simulate a column of the Venus atmosphere from 40 to 100 km above the surface. Their aerosol number density results agree well with Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) data from Knollenberg and Hunten (J. Geophys. Res., 85, 8039-8058, 1980), while their gas distribution results match that of Kolodner and Steffes below 55 km (Icarus, 132, 151-169, 1998). The resulting size distribution of cloud particles shows two distinct modes, qualitatively matching the observations of PVO. They also observe a third mode in their results with a size of a few microns at 48 km altitude, which appears to support the existence of the controversial third mode in the PVO data. This mode disappears if coagulation is not included in the simulation. The Upper Haze size distribution shows two lognormal-like distributions overlapping each other, possibly indicating the presence of the two distinct modes. In this work, we significantly extend the analysis to include new SOIR (PSS, 2014 Submitted) and VeRa VEx temperature profiles (which are quite different from the PVO profiles) and discuss our new results in context of the recent VEx observations (Wilquet et al., Icarus 217, 2012) with an inter comparison with the PVO data. We will also discuss similarities and differences arising from the PVO and VEx epochs where they exist.
- Publication:
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40th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014cosp...40E2450P