Mars' middle and high latitude meteorological environment is investigated using a very high resolution global atmospheric circulation model. This approach is motivated by Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of ``comma''-shaped cloud formations and widespread dust activity in the polar region during early northern spring and summer [1]. Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) imaging from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) also indicate large-scale, spiralling condensate cloud structures in the polar environment at this season [2]. Modeling the circulation at high spatial resolution is necessary in order to illuminate processes important to local and regional dust activity, and condensate cloud formation, structure, and evolution within the edge of the seasonal polar caps. Whether surface and/or upper-level fronts (i.e., narrow zones with enhanced mass density, momentum and thermal contrasts within individual transient baroclinic waves) can form in Mars' high-latitude baroclinic zone, and whether associated frontal circulations are sufficient to raise dust in high latitudes, are explored. A mechanistic multi-level global atmospheric model having very high horizontal resolution (i.e., correponding to O(0.8-2.0 deg) longitude-latitude resolution) with simplified physics is employed. This modeling methodology can capture consistently the initiation of baroclinic life cycles from which frontal structures can develop, such that a complete energy cascade from synoptic scale cyclogenesis to the subsynoptic scale frontogenesis is possible. Mechanistic cyclo-, fronto-genetic modeling can aid in assessing Mars' polar climate, in particular, the intensity of circulation regimes that can develop. References: [1] James, P.B., et al., 1999: Icarus, 138, 64-73. [2] Malin, M.C., and K.S. Edgett, 1999: 5th Intl. Conf. On Mars (abstract), 6027.
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