EGU23-7173
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7173
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Daily and Seasonal Behaviour of Fast Pressure Fluctuations at Jezero Crater

Teresa del Río Gaztelurrutia1, Agustin Sanchez-Lavega1, Ricardo Hueso1, Asier Munguira1, Mark T. Lemmon2, Michael D. Smith3, German Martinez4, Jorge Pla-Garcia5, Claire Newman6, Daniel Viudez5, Manuel de la Torre-Juarez7, and Jose Antonio Rodriguez-Manfredi5
Teresa del Río Gaztelurrutia et al.
  • 1Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidad del Pais Vasco (UPV/EHU) Bilbao, Spain (teresa.delrio@ehu.eus)
  • 2Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO, USA
  • 3NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
  • 4Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX, USA
  • 5Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), Madrid, Spain
  • 6Aeolis Corporation, Sierra Madre, CA, USA.
  • 7Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.

Pressure measurements by the MEDA sensor on board Perseverance Rover show oscillations in a wide range of temporal scales, from the seasonal evolution of average pressure to rapid fluctuations on the scale of a few seconds. In this work, we profit from an entire Martian Year of pressure measurements to analyse the seasonal and daily evolution of rapid fluctuations, a signature of atmospheric turbulence.  We find that during the full Martian year, fluctuations are enhanced at convective hours of the day, but the intensity of fluctuations is modulated through the seasons. At nighttime, the first half of the Martian years is characterized by an almost complete absence of fluctuations with an especially calm period in the early morning, while bursts of fluctuation become common in the dusty season. We also analyse the change of the daily pattern induced by regional dust storms at Jezero. We study the power spectra of the fluctuations to try to infer information about different turbulent regimes at the surface layer and their dependence on local time and season. Finally, we explore possible correlations with the dust load of the atmosphere and the temperature gradients, and we look at the origin of nighttime bursts of turbulence.

How to cite: del Río Gaztelurrutia, T., Sanchez-Lavega, A., Hueso, R., Munguira, A., Lemmon, M. T., Smith, M. D., Martinez, G., Pla-Garcia, J., Newman, C., Viudez, D., de la Torre-Juarez, M., and Rodriguez-Manfredi, J. A.: Daily and Seasonal Behaviour of Fast Pressure Fluctuations at Jezero Crater, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-7173, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7173, 2023.