Electron density and altitude of the main ionospheric peak of Mars as observed by Mars Express instruments. Archived data for the paper "Seasonal and geographical variability of the Martian ionosphere from Mars Express observations", submitted to JGR-Planets

This repository contains archived data for the manuscript "Seasonal and geographical variability of the Martian ionosphere from Mars Express observations", published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets. Details about the methods to generate the data can be found in the paper.

5 data files plus 2 readme text files are included.

The file MEx_ionpeak.dat (described in the readme file README_ionpeak.txt) contains the peak electron densities and peak altitudes resulting from 34539 observations. Each record includes 14 columns. The content of each column is:

Column 1: Instrument providing the observation (MARSIS or MaRS)
Column 2: Mars Year at which the observation was obtained (from MY27 to MY33)
Column 3: Solar Longitude (Ls) of the observation (unit: degrees)
Column 4: Latitude of the observation (unit: degrees)
Column 5: Longitude of the observation (unit: degrees)
Column 6: Solar Zenith Angle (SZA) of the observation (unit: degrees)
Column 7: F10.7 solar proxy index at 1 Astronomic Unit (unit: solar flux units)
Column 8: Peak electron density measured by the instrument (unit: cm-3)
Column 9: Peak electron density at the subsolar point, i.e., corrected for the SZA variation (unit: cm-3)
Column 10: Peak electron density at the subsolar point and at F10.7 (1AU)=100, i.e., corrected for the SZA and the solar radiation output variations (unit: cm-3)
Column 11: Peak electron density at the subsolar point, at F10.7 (1AU)=100 and corrected for the seasonal variation (unit: cm-3)
Column 12: Peak altitude measured by the instrument (unit: km)
Column 13: Peak altitude at the subsolar point, i.e. corrected for the SZA variation (unit: km)
Column 14: Peak altitude at the subsolar point and corrected for the seasonal variation (unit: km)

The files eprofiles_MaRS.dat, eprofiles_MARSIS_prof1.dat, eprofiles_MARSIS_prof2.dat and eprofiles_MARSIS_prof3.dat contain 4 electron density profiles. They are described in the file README_eprofiles.txt. Each file includes 2 columns, the first one being the altitude (unit: km) and the second one the electron density (unit: cm-3).

Contact: Francisco Gonzalez-Galindo, [e-mail]