This project will elucidate the water cycle on Mars, by measuring the time-varying water content in Martian water-ice clouds. The PI and collaborators will modify and adapt data-analysis methods that they have developed for use with ground-based multi-spectral-bandpass near-infrared imaging of Mars, and apply it to the wealth of imaging data acquired by the CRISM instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. The purpose of their approach, which makes extensive use of Principal Component Analysis followed by radiative transfer modeling, is to separate the reflected-light signature of clouds from that of the surface and infer the optical depths in water and carbon dioxide features. These measurements of cloud optical depth will be important observational constraints for other theoretical efforts to model the Martian atmosphere. A significant fraction of the image processing and analysis work will be performed by undergraduate students at the PI's primarily undergraduate institution.
