Insight into the seasonal asymmetry of nonmigrating tides on Mars

In this paper we demonstrate how the interplay between surface-generated tidal components and those excited by longitudinally varying solar absorption due to dust can explain the seasonal asymmetry of nonmigrating tides as seen in middle-atmosphere Mars Climate Sounder's observations. This seasonal asymmetry, which is consistent in all 3 years of available observations, is not readily explained by the current theory of nonmigrating tides on Mars. Sources traditionally include the changes in the Martian topography and the nonuniformity of the surface thermal properties. We show that the seasonal asymmetry can be explained by the destructive interference from an asymmetric tidal component forced by the wave number patterns in dust opacity in the northern low latitudes.