Meteorology of the MGCM-LETKF Mars Reanalysis

We examine the meteorology of the Mars reanalysis created with the GFDL Mars Global Climate Model (MGCM) and Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (LETKF) data assimilation system (DAS). We have assimilated more than a year of Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) retrievals, included realistic dust and water ice cloud distributions, as well as created analyses with Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) profiles, and we plan to discuss the latest improvements to the DAS. An important application of the reanalysis is to assess the synoptic weather state on a given date. Synoptic maps of eddy fields are compared between analyses using two different dust scenarios to examine the robustness of temperatures and winds with respect to differences in aerosol distribution. The characteristics and structure of extratropical traveling waves, including dominant wave number regimes, are compared to freely running model simulations as well as purely observational studies. Understanding the predictability of traveling waves is important for assessing forecast skill for Mars numerical weather prediction systems, as well as the quality of the reanalysis during gaps in observational coverage.