THE SENSITIVITY OF THE MARTIAN SURFACE PRESSURE AND ATMOSPHERIC MASS BUDGET TO VARIOUS PARAMETERS - A COMPARISON BETWEEN NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS AND VIKING OBSERVATIONS

The sensitivity of the Martian atmospheric circulation to a number of poorly known or strongly varying parameters (surface roughness length, atmospheric optical depth, CO2 ice albedo, and thermal emissivity) is investigated through experiments performed with the Martian version o f the atmospheric general circulation model of Laboratoire de Meteorol ogie Dynamique, with a rather coarse horizontal resolution (a grid wit h 32 points in longitude and 24 points in latitude). The results are e valuated primarily on the basis of comparisons with the surface pressu re records of the Viking mission. To that end, the records are decompo sed into long-period seasonal variations due to mass exchange with the polar caps and latitudinal redistribution of mass, and short-period v ariations due to transient longitudinally propagating waves. The sensi tivity experiments include a 5-year control simulation and shorter sim ulations (a Little longer than 1 year) performed with ''perturbed'' pa rameter values. The main conclusions are that (1) a change of horizont al resolution (twice as many points in each direction) mostly affects the transient waves, (2) surface roughness lengths have a significant impact on the near-surface wind and, as a matter of consequence, on th e latitudinal redistribution of mass, (3) atmospheric dust optical dep th has a significant impact on radiative balance and dynamics, and (4) CO2 ice albedo and thermal emissivity strongly influence mass exchang e between the atmosphere and the polar caps. In view of this last conc lusion, an automatic procedure is implemented through which the albedo and emissivity of each of the two polar caps are determined, together with the total(i.e., including the caps) atmospheric CO2 content, in such a way as to get the closest fit of the model to the Viking pressu re measurements.