The atmospheric temperatures over Olympus Mons on Mars: An atmospheric hot ring

We study the thermal fields over Olympus Mons separating seasons (northern spring and summer against southern spring and summer) and local time observations (day side versus night side). Temperature vertical profiles retrieved from Planetary Fourier Spectrometer on board Mars Express (PFS-MEX) data have been used. In many orbits (running north to south along a meridian) passing over the top of the volcano there is evidence of a hot air on top of the volcano, of two enhancement of the air temperature both north and south of it and in between a collar of air that is colder than nearby at low altitudes, and warmer than nearby at high altitudes. Mapping together many orbits passing over or near the volcano we find that the hot air has the tendency to form an hot ring around it. This hot structure occurs mostly between LT = 10.00 and 15.00 and during the northern summer. Distance of the hot structure from the top of the volcano is about 600 km (10 degrees of latitude). The hot atmospheric region is 300-420 km (5-7 degrees) wide. Hot ring temperature contrasts of about 40 K occur at 2 km above the surface and decrease to 20 K at 5 km and to 10K at 10 km. The atmospheric circulation over an area of 40 degrees x 40 degrees (latitudes and longitudes) is affected by the topography and the presence of Olympus Mons (-133 degrees W, 18 degrees N). We discuss also the thermal stability of the atmosphere over the selected area using the potential temperatures. The temperature field over the top of the volcano shows unstable atmosphere within 10 km from the surface. Finally, we interpret the hot temperatures around volcano as an adiabatic compression of down-welling branch coming from over the top of volcano. Different air temperature profiles are observed in the same seasons during the night, or in different seasons. In northern spring-summer during the night the isothermal contours do not show the presence of the volcano until we reach close to the surface very much, where a thermal inversion is observed. The surface temperature shows higher values (by 10K) in correspondence of the scarp (an abrupt altimetry variation of roughly 5 km) on south (6 degrees N) and north (30 degrees N) sides of volcano. During the southern spring-summer, on the contrary the isothermal curves run parallel to the surface even on top the volcano, just like the GCM have predicted. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.