NASA Ames Mars Climate Modeling Center Beta Output Release 1

This archive contains simulation output from the Mars Climate Modeling Center's FV3-based Mars Global Climate Model (MGCM).

The FV3-based Mars GCM uses the NOAA/GFDL cubed-sphere finite volume dynamical core and Mars-appropriate physical parameterizations developed at NASA Ames Research Center (see Haberle et al., 2019 for detailed physics descriptions). The planetary boundary layer is parameterized based on the Mellor and Yamada (1982) scheme; the turbulent fluxes are computed from Monin-Obukhov similarity theory. A two-stream correlated-k radiative transfer scheme is used to account for the radiative effects of CO2 and (optionally) H2O gas and atmospheric aerosols (Toon et al., 1989; Lacis and Oinas, 1991). In this version, dust is the only radiatively active aerosol and its optical properties depend on specified, fixed effective particle sizes. The spatial and temporal distribution of dust is prescribed based on a background dust climatology, which is a zonally averaged dust map constructed from the dust scenarios of Montebone et al. (2015) by identifying the spatially and seasonally varying minimum value of the multiyear record (MY29-34) to filter out the influence of episodic regional dust storms. In the vertical, dust follows modified Conrath-nu profiles (Forget et al., 1999). The CO2 cycle is accounted for through the condensation and sublimation of CO2 on the surface and the condensation of CO2 in the atmosphere.

This is a c48 reference simulation, which means that the relatively uniform horizontal resolution in the cubed-sphere geometry is, on average 1.875 degrees. The simulation was executed for six years to ensure equilibration, and output from the sixth simulated year is provided. Output is provided at a regridded resolution of 2 degrees of longitude by 2 degrees of latitude, with 56 hybrid sigma-pressure layers in the vertical.

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