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This work combines 17 years of Mars Express radio science (MaRS) observations with proxies for insolation and local/global atmospheric dust to investigate the combined and individual effects on the dayside ionosphere of Mars from the top down to the ionospheric base. The increase in insolation from orbital apocenter to pericenter in combination with Mars‘ dust cycle causes an average rise of the whole photochemically dominated region of the dayside ionosphere, ranging from 13 km at the ionospheric base up to 22 km above the main peak during conditions without a global dust storm. The declining phase of the 2018 global dust storm was observed by MaRS on the southern hemisphere and close to pericenter. The observed lifting effect on the whole photochemically dominated region of the ionosphere from the increased insolation and the high local and global atmospheric dust levels exceeds that seen by MaRS from similar seasons during years without a global dust storm. The average ionospheric peak altitude at the subsolar point rises for increasing levels of local atmospheric dust until a maximum elevation is reached. This maximum depends on the available insolation at the top of the planetary atmosphere. Further increases of the local atmospheric dust levels do not lead to a further rise of the average ionospheric peak altitude in the investigated data set. This indicates a limit for the warming/expansion of the lower neutral atmosphere and the consecutive lifting of the ionosphere based on the available insolation and explains why regional dust storms can cause a similar lifting of the ionospheric main peak region as global dust storms. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved., The Mars Express Radio Science Experiment (MaRS) was funded by BMWi Berlin via the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) under the Grant 50QM1802. Support for Mars Express Radio Science at Stanford University was provided by NASA through a JPL Contract. Support for the Multimission Radio Science Support Team was provided by NASA/JPL. Portions of this research were performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under contract with NASA. We thank everyone involved in the Mars Express project at ESTEC, ESOC, ESAC, JPL, and the ESTRACK and DSN ground stations for their continuous support. K. P., M. P. and S. T. acknowledge funding for this project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Grant PE 3225/2-1, PA 525/25-1 and TE 664/4-1. F.G.G. acknowledges financial support from the grant CEX2021-001131-S funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033.

It has been suggested that dust storms efficiently transport water vapor from the near-surface to the middle atmosphere on Mars. Knowledge of the water vapor vertical profile during dust storms is important to understand water escape. During Martian Year 34, two dust storms occurred on Mars: a global dust storm (June to mid-September 2018) and a regional storm (January 2019). Here we present water vapor vertical profiles in the periods of the two dust storms (Ls = 162–260° and Ls = 298–345°) from the solar occultation measurements by Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) onboard ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). We show a significant increase of water vapor abundance in the middle atmosphere (40–100 km) during the global dust storm. The water enhancement rapidly occurs following the onset of the storm (Ls~190°) and has a peak at the most active period (Ls~200°). Water vapor reaches very high altitudes (up to 100 km) with a volume mixing ratio of ~50 ppm. The water vapor abundance in the middle atmosphere shows high values consistently at 60°S-60°N at the growth phase of the dust storm (Ls = 195°–220°), and peaks at latitudes greater than 60°S at the decay phase (Ls = 220°–260°). This is explained by the seasonal change of meridional circulation: from equinoctial Hadley circulation (two cells) to the solstitial one (a single pole-to-pole cell). We also find a conspicuous increase of water vapor density in the middle atmosphere at the period of the regional dust storm (Ls = 322–327°), in particular at latitudes greater than 60°S. ©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved., S. A. is >Charge de Recherches> of the F.R.S.-FNRS. ExoMars is a space mission of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos. The NOMAD experiment is led by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (IASBBIRA), assisted by Co-PI teams from Spain (IAA-CSIC), Italy (INAF-IAPS), and the United Kingdom (Open University). This project acknowledges funding by the Belgian Science Policy Office, with the financial and contractual coordination by the European Space Agency Prodex Office (PEA 4000103401 and 4000121493), by the Spanish MICINN through its Plan Nacional and by European funds under grants PGC2018-101836-B-I00 and ESP2017-87143-R (MINECO/FEDER), as well as by UK Space Agency through grants ST/R005761/1, ST/P001262/1, ST/R001405/1, and ST/S00145X/1 and Italian Space Agency through grant 2018-2-HH.0. The IAA/CSIC team acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the >Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa> award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). This work was supported by the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique-FNRS under grant numbers 30442502 (ET_HOME) and T.0171.16 (CRAMIC) and Belgian Science Policy Office BrainBe SCOOP Project. U.S. investigators were supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Canadian investigators were supported by the Canadian Space Agency. The results retrieved from the NOMAD measurements used in this article are available on the BIRA-IASB data repository: http://repository.aeronomie.be/?doi= 10.18758/71021054 (Aoki et al., 2019).