MarsWRF imposed dust simulations for investigation of dust storm trajectories

This dataset contains representative MarsWRF simulation outputs used to conduct the analysis discussed in Wang et al. [2023]. The model uses a staggered "C" computational grid, with 52 vertical eta layers and a 2º longitude × 2° latitude horizontal resolution. The model grid structure is summarized in a data object structure that is saved in the IDL software (NV5 Geospatial, Broomfield, CO) SAV file format as “wrfgrid.sav”. It can be read using the IDL software command  “restore,'wrfgrid.sav'” or using the Python “scipy” library module that can interpret the IDL SAV file format, scipy.io.readsav.

Files for each simulation are collected using the “tar” archive tool and compressed using the “gzip” tool to minimize storage requirements, and can be extracted similarly, (e.g., tar -xvzf *.tar.gz). Each file is written in NetCDF format and contains 30 sols of 2-hourly output (i.e., 360 output timesteps per file) for U (zonal wind), V (meridional wind), T (perturbation potential temperature with respect to 300 K, i.e., potential temperature – 300., which is a native WRF output field), PSFC (surface pressure), L_S (solar longitude), and UST (surface friction velocity). 

The no-storm control run simulation employs the dust optical depth scenario saved in dustscenario_nostorm.nc. This optical depth scenario is derived from the observationally-derived multiannual dust climatology [Montabone et al., 2015] by reducing the climatology to a single year and removing the influence of large dust storm episodes in the contributing years. The other MarsWRF simulations included in this archive impose additional dust optical depth over the base no-storm dust scenario in different latitudinal bands (i.e., spanning all longitudes) and for different LS time periods, as indicated by the  archive file names. For example, ls200n230_45N75N_tau1.732.tar is the archive file for the simulation with additional imposed dust between 45ºN and 75ºN from Ls = 200º to Ls = 230º with the imposed optical depth amplitude of 1.732. Due to the large data volume, the archived files for each simulation can only cover the corresponding Ls period of interest for a representative Mars year. For details of the simulations, please refer to Wang et al. [2023 submitted] listed in the References section.