Night side distribution of SO2 content in Venus’ upper mesosphere

[en] In this paper we present the first night side distribution of SO2 content in Venus’ upper mesosphere (altitudes from 85 to 105 km). The dataset is based on the SPICAV UV stellar occultation experiment which took place onboard ESA's Venus Express (VEX) orbiter in 2006–2014. The UV channel of SPICAV spectrometer detected absorption bands of SO2 and CO2 in the spectral range 180–300 nm with a resolution of 1–2 nm while stellar light was occulted by the mesosphere. Altitude profiles of sulfur dioxide's volume mixing ratio (VMR) could be retrieved in the upper part of the mesosphere covering the whole night side on Venus. In parallel, we have reprocessed the terminator UV solar occultations dataset (Belyaev et al., 2012. Icarus 217, 740–751) in the same altitude range and extended its statistics until 2014. On average the SO2 VMR increases with altitude from 10–30 ppb at 85 km to 100–300 ppb at 100 km in both regimes of occultation. The midnight SO2 abundance appears to be 3–4 times higher than in the terminator region: 150–200 ppbv versus 50 pppv at altitude around 95 km. These new results were compared with the distribution of oxygen atoms, which are tracers of the global subsolar-antisolar (SS-AS) circulation at ∼100 km (the data provided by Soret et al., 2012 Icarus, 217, 849–855). The night time behavior looks similar for SO2 molecules and O atoms with a correlation coefficient Rcorr = 0.73. Moreover, the retrieved SO2 enrichment above 85 km appears to correlate with the density of H2SO4 droplets (Luginin et al., 2016; Icarus 277, 154–170). © 2017 Elsevier Inc.

Disciplines :

Space science, astronomy & astrophysics

Author, co-author :

Belyaev, D. A.; Space Research Institute (IKI), 84/32 Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow, 117997, Russian Federation

Evdokimova, D. G.; Space Research Institute (IKI), 84/32 Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow, 117997, Russian Federation

Montmessin, F.; LATMOS, CNRS/INSU/IPSL, Quartier des Garennes, 11 bd. d'Alembert, Guyancourt, 78280, France

Bertaux, J.-L.; LATMOS, CNRS/INSU/IPSL, Quartier des Garennes, 11 bd. d'Alembert, Guyancourt, 78280, France

Korablev, O. I.; Space Research Institute (IKI), 84/32 Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow, 117997, Russian Federation

Fedorova, A. A.; Space Research Institute (IKI), 84/32 Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow, 117997, Russian Federation

Marcq, E.; LATMOS, CNRS/INSU/IPSL, Quartier des Garennes, 11 bd. d'Alembert, Guyancourt, 78280, France

Soret, Lauriane ; Université de Liège - ULiège

Luginin, M. S.; Space Research Institute (IKI), 84/32 Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow, 117997, Russian Federation

Language :

English

Title :

Night side distribution of SO2 content in Venus’ upper mesosphere

Publication date :

2017

Journal title :

Icarus

ISSN :

0019-1035

eISSN :

1090-2643

Publisher :

Academic Press Inc.

Volume :

294

Pages :

58-71

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Funders :

CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales
BELSPO - Politique scientifique fédérale
ASE - Agence Spatiale Européenne
CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
RSF - Russian Foundation for Fundamental Investigations
ESA - Ecological Society of America

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