Competition between ICME and crustal magnetic field on the loss of Mars atmosphere

  • Hwang, Junga (Solar and Space Weather group, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)) ;
  • Jo, Gyeongbok (Department of Astronomy, Space Science and Geology, Chungnam National University (CNU)) ;
  • Kim, Roksoon (Solar and Space Weather group, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)) ;
  • Jang, Soojeong (Solar and Space Weather group, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)) ;
  • Cho, Kyungsuk (Solar and Space Weather group, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)) ;
  • Lee, Jaejin (Solar and Space Weather group, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)) ;
  • Yi, Yu (Department of Astronomy, Space Science and Geology, Chungnam National University (CNU))
  • Published : 2017.10.10

Abstract

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile (MAVEN) mission has been providing valuable information on the atmospheric loss of Mars since its launch in November 2013. The Neutral Gass and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) onboard MAVEN, was developed to analyze the composition of the Martian upper atmospheric neutrals and ions depending on various space weather conditions. We investigate a variation of upper atmospheric ion densities depending on the interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). It is known that the Mars has a very weak global magnetic field, so upper atmosphere of Mars has been strongly affected by the solar activities. Meanwhile, a strong crustal magnetic field exists on local surfaces, so they also have a compensating effect on the upper atmospheric loss outside the Mars. The weak crustal field has an influence up to 200km altitude, but on a strong field region, especially east longitude of $180^{\circ}$ and latitude of $-50^{\circ}$, they have an influence over 1,400km altitude. In this paper, we investigated which is more dominant between the crustal field effect and the ICME effect to the atmospheric loss. At 400km altitude, the ion density over the strong crustal field region did not show a significant variation despite of ICME event. However, over the other areas, the variation associated with ICME event is far more overwhelming.

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