Solar activity variations of thermospheric temperatures on Mars and a problem of CO in the lower atmosphere

Long-term MGS drag density observations at 390 km reveal variations of the density with season LS (by a factor of 2) and solar activity index F10.7 (by a factor of 3 for F10.7 = 40–100). According to Forbes et al. (Forbes, J.M., Lemoine, F.G., Bruinsma, S.L., Smith, M.D., Zhang, X. [2008]. Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L01201, doi:10.1029/2007GL031904), the variation with F10.7 reflects variations of the exospheric temperature from 192 to 284 K. However, the derived temperature range corresponds to variation of the density at 390 km by a factor of 8, far above the observed factor of 3. The recent thermospheric GCMs agree with the derived temperatures but do not prove their adequacy to the MGS densities at 390 km. A model used by Forbes et al. neglects effects of eddy diffusion, chemistry and escape on species densities above 138 km. We have made a 1D-model of neutral and ion composition at 80–400 km that treats selfconsistently chemistry and transport of species with F10.7, T∞, and [CO2]80 km as input parameters. Applying this model to the MGS densities at 390 km, we find variation of T∞ from 240 to 280 K for F10.7 = 40 and 100, respectively. The results are compared with other observations and models. Temperatures from some observations and the latest models disagree with the MGS densities at low and mean solar activity. Linear fits to the exospheric temperatures are T∞ = 122 + 2.17F10.7 for the observations, T∞ = 131 + 1.46F10.7 for the latest models, and T∞ = 233 + 0.54F10.7 for the MGS densities at 390 km. Maybe the observed MGS densities are overestimated near solar minimum when they are low and difficult to measure. Seasonal variations of Mars’ thermosphere corrected for the varying heliocentric distance are mostly due to the density variations in the lower and middle atmosphere and weakly affect thermospheric temperature. Nonthermal escape processes for H, D, H2, HD, and He are calculated for the solar minimum and maximum conditions. r problem considered here refers to Mars global photochemistry in the lower and middle atmosphere. The models gave too low abundances of CO, smaller by an order of magnitude than those observed. Our current work shows that modifications in the boundary conditions proposed by Zahnle et al. (Zahnle, K., Haberle, R.M., Catling, D.C., Kasting, J.F. [2008]. J. Geophys. Res. 113, E11004, doi:10.1029/2008JE003160) are reasonable but do not help to solve the problem.