Impact of Grid Resolution on Wave-Mean Flow Interactions With High Resolution Mars Global Climate Model Simulations

Abstract

We have executed a series of simulations with the NASA Ames Mars Global Climate Model by systematically increasing horizontal and vertical resolution with the goal of resolving small-scale waves that significantly affect the mean thermal and momentum structure of the atmosphere. Our reference high-resolution simulation is 1/4° horizontal resolution and ∼1.5 km vertical resolution, and we compare results to a low-resolution simulation that is ∼4° in the horizontal and ∼4 km in the vertical. We show that the main biases in the zonal mean temperature and momentum fields between the low- and high-resolution simulations can be alleviated by including parameterized orographic and non-orographic gravity waves at low resolution.