NASA Ames Mars Global Climate Model

About this technology

Overview

We present the NASA Ames Mars Global Climate Model (NASA Ames MGCM) physics submodule for public release. This submodule is intended to work with the Finite-Volume dynamical core and cubed-sphere grid (FV3) developed by NOAA/GFDL and includes several of the Mars physics packages employed by the NASA Ames Legacy Mars Global Climate Model to simulate the Martian climate. The physics packages include: model surface properties such as thermal inertia and albedo; a ground and subsurface temperature scheme; a planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme; water and carbon dioxide sublimation/condensation physics; a 2-moment dust and water-ice cloud microphysical scheme; several methods for the treatment of dust including an analytically prescribed dust field, dust lifting matched to a prescribed map, and fully-interactive lifting; a two-stream radiative transfer code based on correlated-Ks; orographic and non-orographic gravity waves; and radiatively active water-ice clouds. We also support early Mars climate simulations with extended correlated-K tables for denser atmospheres, CO2-CO2 and/or CO2-H2 pressure-broadening in the atmosphere, and bulk CO2 and H2O cloud condensation schemes.