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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2010.06.043 Byline: Alexey A. Pankine (a), Leslie K. Tamppari (a), Michael D. Smith (b) Keywords: Mars; Mars, Atmosphere; Mars, Climate; Mars, Polar caps Abstract: We report on new retrievals of water vapor column abundances from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) data. The new retrievals are from the TES nadir data taken above the 'cold' surface areas in the North polar region (T.sub.surf Author Affiliation: (a) Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, MS 183-301, Pasadena, CA 91109, United States (b) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, MS 693, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States Article History: Received 17 March 2010; Revised 11 June 2010; Accepted 27 June 2010

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2009.06.009 Byline: Alexey A. Pankine (a), Leslie K. Tamppari (a), Michael D. Smith (b) Keywords: Mars; Mars, atmosphere; Mars, climate; Mars, polar caps Abstract: Atmospheric water vapor abundances in Mars' north polar region (NPR, from 60[degrees] to 90[degrees]N) are mapped as function of latitude and longitude for spring and summer seasons, and their spatial, seasonal, and interannual variability is discussed. Water vapor data are from Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) and the Viking Orbiter (VO) Mars Atmospheric Water Detector (MAWD). The data cover three complete northern spring-summer seasons in 1977-1978, 2000-2001 and 2002-2003, and shorter periods of spring-summer seasons during 1975, 1999 and 2004. Long term interannual variability in the averaged NPR abundances may exist, with Viking MAWD observations showing twice as much water vapor during summer as the MGS TES observations more than 10 martian years (MY) later. While the averaged abundances are very similar in TES observations for the same season in different years, the spatial distributions in the early summer season do vary significantly year over year. Spatial and temporal variabilities increase between L.sub.s [approximately equal to]80-140[degrees], which may be related to vapor sublimation from the North Polar Residual Cap (NPRC), or to changes in circulation. Spatial variability is observed on scales of [approximately equal to]100km and temporal variability is observed on scales of Author Affiliation: (a) Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, MS 183-301, Pasadena, CA 91109, United States (b) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, MS 693, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States Article History: Received 26 November 2008; Revised 9 April 2009; Accepted 15 June 2009