Sounding of planetary atmospheres by means of global infrarred radiations (SPRING)

In this project we tackled several fundamental aspects of the Earth, Mars, Venus and Titan atmospheres. With regard to the former, we want to study the Sun-Earth connection within the CAWSES international program. In particular, we aim to study the effect of the solar particles on the atmospheric chemical composition (nitrogen oxides and ozone) from the stratosphere to the thermosphere. Another main goal of this project is to study the trends of the atmospheric temperature and composition during the current century, as measured by the MIPAS/Envisat (ESA) and SABER/TIMED (NASA) instruments. Another important aspect, a hot topic nowadays, is the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere interaction, which is fundamental in order to understand the ozone hole evolution and the feedback between the climate change and the ozone hole. We plan as well to continue our previous work related to satellite IR data retrievals and to contribute to the design of new instrumentation for the Earth observation from space.
 
Regarding the other terrestrial-type atmospheres, as the ones of Mars, Venus and Titan, we plan to extend the analysis of Mars Express, Venus Express and Cassini mission data in order to describe the upper layers of those atmospheres, improve and apply the radiative and inversion models previously developed by our group, and support the development of 3-D global circulation models and 1-D photochemical models for the aforementioned bodies. In that sense, we will apply our expertise and knowledge in the inversion in the IR of the Earth atmosphere parameters to the Mars and Venus atmospheres. We plan thus to develop retrieval schemes of those atmospheres and to apply them to Mars-Express and Venus-Express data. Another aspect is related to VIMS/Cassini data and with Titan observations from Earth with the VLO/ESO. We will start collaborations with the Spanish teams participating in the MetNet and REMS missions to  Mars, focusing in the scientific exploitation of these atmospheric instruments.

GAPT members involved:
Diego Bermejo Pantaleón
Bernd Funke
Maya García Comas
Francisco González-Galindo
María José López González
Manuel López Puertas
Miguel Ángel López Valverde