The Mars Climate Database(MCD version 5.2)
E. Millour1, F. Forget1, A. Spiga1, T. Navarro1, J.-B. Madeleine1 , L.
Montabone1,2, A. Pottier1,3, F. Lefèvre3, F. Montmessin3 , J.-Y. Chaufray3,M.A. López-Valverde4, F. González-Galindo4, S.R. Lewis5, P.L. Read6, J.-P.
Huot7, M.-C. Desjean8 and the MCD/GCM development team
1Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, IPSL, France
2Space Science Institute, Boulder, USA
3Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales, IPSL, France

4Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain
5Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Open University, UK
6Atmospheric, Oceanic & Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, UK
7European Space Agency, Netherlands
8Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, France

May 14th 2015, Kobe

The Mars Climate Databasea brief history of the MCD project• 1995: ESA (European Space Agency) and CNES (French Space Agency)
identify the need for a better comprehension of the Martian environment
for future missions to Mars.
• 1995: The LMD and AOPP (Oxford University) groups (later joined by theIAA, Spain, group) team up, and funded by ESA and CNES , improve their
GCMs to provide outputs (the MCD) to the space agencies and thescientific community.
• 2001: MCDv3.0 (and then MCDv3.1) is released (the first to be really
distributed, with a large number of users).
• 2005 : MCDv4.0 and MCDv4.1 released.
• 2006 : MCDv4.2 released.
• 2008 : MCDv4.3 released.
• 2012: MCDv5.0 released.
• 2014: MCDv5.1 released.

• 2015: MCDv5.2 released.

What is the Mars Climate Database ?
• The Mars Climate Database (MCD) is a database derived fromGlobal Climate Model (GCM) simulations, using the LMD-GCM.
• The MCD is intended to be useful for engineering applications(e.g. Entry Descent & Landing studies) and scientific work which
require accurate knowledge of the Martian atmosphere (e.g.
Analysis of observations).
• The MCD is freely available, either via light online access(http://www-mars.lmd.jussieu.fr) for moderate needs, or a fullversion which includes advanced post-processing software(Fortran subroutine call_mcd; examples of C, C++, IDL, MATLAB,SCILAB, python interfaces are provided).
• MCD v4.x and v5.x (v5.2 released in March 2015) have been
distributed to more than 200 teams around the world.

MCD contents & main features• The MCD provides mean values and statistics of main
meteorological variables: pressure, atmospheric density,temperature, winds.

• Other variables included in the MCD:

Water cycle model
Chemistry model- Surface temperature and pressure- Thermal and solar radiative fluxes- CO2 ice cover- Dust column opacity and mass mixing ratio

Thermosphere model
Ionosphere model- Dust effective radius and dust deposition rate- [H2O] vapour and [H2O] ice columns and mixing ratio- Water ice effective radius- [CO2], [CO], [O], [O2], [O3] [N2], [Ar], [H], [H2], [electrons] mixing ratios- Air specific heat capacity, viscosity and reduced gas constant r- Convective PBL height, typical updraft and downdraft velocities in PBL- Surface heat stress and surface sensible heat flux-…

MCD contents & main features• The MCD enables to reconstruct realistic conditions using:- day-to-day variability of main variables- adding random small scale perturbations as vertical gravity
waves (of user specified wavelength)- adding random large scale perturbations (extracted from EOFs
of individual GCM runs)• The MCD provides a high resolution mode based on 32 pix./deg.
MOLA topography (where GCM resolution is 5.625° x 3.75°)
combined to Viking Lander 1 pressure records, which yields:- high resolution surface pressure- reconstructed high resolution atmospheric temperature, using
an empirical scheme validated using high resolution GCM runs.

MCD contents & main features• The dust load of the Martian atmosphere is highly variable; theMCD includes 4 dust scenarios to bracket reality,• Topped by 3 EUV scenarios to account for the Sun’s 11 year cycle.
Opportunity entry profile(retrieved by P. Withers)• Climatology: “Bestguess” scenario for atypical Mars year
• Cold: very clear sky• Warm: dusty
atmosphere• Dust Storm: severe
global dust storm• Note that Opportunity
landed during a local duststorm

MCD v5.2 dust
scenarios• We have access to dust
scenarios for last 8 Mars years(Montabone et al., 2015).
• Combining all “non-global dust
storm” years (MY 24, 26, 27,29, 30, 31), we can generate amean Mars year dust
scenario and climatology.

•Moreover, specific simulations
for each of the MY years arealso provided in MCDv5.2(New!)MCD v5.2 dust scenarios• The cold scenario: Very low amount of airborne dust andneglect radiative effect of water ice clouds. Dust opacity at agiven season and location is taken as the minimum over the 8
Martian years MY24-MY31 dust scenarios, moreover decreased
by 50%.
• The warm scenario: Very high amount of airborne dust (but nota planet encircling dust storm event). Dust opacity at given
season and location is taken as the maximum over the 8 Martianyears (excluding the global dust storm periods during MY25 andMY28), moreover increased by 50%.
• The dust storm scenario (over Ls=180-360): An extreme caseof fixed high opacity (tau=5) combined with “darker dust”
properties (ie: using Ockert-Bell dust properties instead of Wolff etal. properties).

Validation of the MCD climatology• Ongoing work (concerning v5.2)• Available measurements are the best way to evaluate
and validate the MCD, e.g.:- Surface temperatures, atmospheric temperatures
and water vapour can be compared to TES values.
- Atmospheric temperatures and water ice can becompared to MCS values.
- Atmospheric temperatures can be compared toMGS and Mars Express Radio Occultations.
- Surface pressures can be compared to Viking Lander,Pathfinder, Phoenix and MSL measurements.
-…

Surface Pressure
Viking Landers
Mars Years 12-13

Surface pressure at VL2 site
and its day to day variability

MCDv5.2 validation – VL2 pressure
Impact of dust scenario• Change in global behavior due to dust storm is well captured by MCD scenarios.

Surface Pressure
REMS onboard Curiosity
Mars Year 31

REMS pressure measurements• Ongoing measurements for now over a Martian Year
(MY31) and continuing

REMS pressure measurements• Ongoing measurements for now over a Martian Year
(MY31) and continuing

REMS pressure measurements• Ongoing measurements for now over a Martian Year
(MY31) and continuingAtmospheric Temperature
TES onboard MGS
Mars Years 24-27(2am-2pm measurements)

Zonal values of atmospheric temperature (106 Pa)

Zonal values of atmospheric temperature (106 Pa)

Distributions of atmospherictemperature difference, at 106Pa, between MCDv5.2(highres.) and TES.

MCD a bit too warm at 2pm.

• Statistics computed for:
 Pressure: 106 Pa
 MY26:0 < Ls < 360

 MY27:0 < Ls < 85

 -50 < latitude < 50
 Bins of 1K

Bracketing TES with MCDv5.2 scenarios
during regularmartian years(e.g. MY26-27)

Bracketing TES with MCDv5.2 scenarios
during global
Planet encirclingstorm (MY25)

Using the Mars Climate Database
The full version: contact us!
millour@lmd.jussieu.fr,forget@lmd.jussieu.fr•Access software“call_mcd” (Fortran)•Matlab, C, C++, IDL,
Python, and Scilabinterfaces

The light “web” version:
http://www-mars.lmd.jussieu.fr•For quick plots•Very easy to use, all you need isa web browser.