A climate database for Mars

A database of statistics which describe the climate and surface environment of Mars has been constructed directly on the basis of output from multiann ual integrations of two general circulation models developed jointly at Lab oratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique du Centre National de la Recherche Scien tifique, France, and the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, with support from the European Space Agency. The models have been developed and validat ed to reproduce the main features of the meteorology of Mars, as observed b y past spacecraft missions. As well as the more standard statistical measur es for mission design studies, the Mars Climate Database includes a novel r epresentation of large-scale variability, using empirical eigenfunctions de rived from an analysis of the full simulations, and small-scale variability using parameterizations of processes such as gravity wave propagation. The database may be used as a tool for mission planning and also provides a va luable resource for scientific studies of the Martian atmosphere. The datab ase is described and critically compared with a representative range of cur rently available observations.