Radiometric comparison of Mars Climate Sounder and Thermal Emission spectrometer measurements

• MCS and TES thermal infrared and solar channel measurements are compared across 5 martian years.
• MCS solar channel measurements are calibrated using coincident CRISM measurements.
• MCS limb geometry solar channel measurements are used to retrieve preliminary vertical aerosol distributions.
• No systematic martian interannual temperature or albedo trends are apparent between the datasets.

Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) nadir oriented thermal infrared and solar channel measurements are compared with Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) measurements across multiple Mars years. Thermal infrared measurements were compared by convolving the TES data using the MCS spectral band passes. The MCS solar channel measurements were calibrated using Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars observations to provide the proper gain factor (3.09 × 10−3 W sr−1 m−2 μm−1). The comparisons of the datasets show that day and night surface and atmospheric temperatures are within 3 K over the course of 5 martian years, after accounting for the local time differences. Any potential interannual variations in global average temperature are masked by calibration and modeling uncertainties. Previous work attributed apparent interannual global surface and atmospheric temperature variations to major dust storm activity; however, this variation has since been attributed to a calibration error in the TES dataset that has been corrected. MCS derived Lambert albedos are slightly higher than TES measurements acquired over the same season and locations. Most of this difference can be attributed to the spectral response functions of MCS and TES. Consistent with previous work, global albedo is highly variable (∼6%) and this variability must be taken into account when determining long term global trends. Vertical aerosol distributions were also derived from the calibrated MCS visible channel limb measurements, demonstrating the utility of the MCS visible channel data for monitoring of aerosols.