Discovery of cloud top ozone on Venus
Abstract
After the first sporadic detections of an ozone (O33 volume mixing ratio peaks in the 10 to 20 ppbv range, yielding observable column densities in the 0.1 to 0.5 Dobson units (DU), comparable to nominal values on Mars but much smaller than for Earth ( ∼ 300 DU). These measurements are supported by our 3D-photochemical model coupled with the LMD-IPSL GCM (Lebonnois et al., 2010), which indicates that the ozone layer identified by SPICAV results from downward transport of O2 ( ∼ 50 ppmv) molecules over the poles by the mean meridional circulation. Our findings do not contradict previous upper limits ( < 2 ppmv) based on O2 measurements (Mills, 1999), since they were restricted to lower latitudes only.
Domains
Astrophysics [astro-ph]Origin | Files produced by the author(s) |
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