A Comparison Of Annular Modes On Mars And Earth.
J. M. Battalio, J. M. Lora, Department Of Earth And Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, Ct
(Joseph.Battalio@Yale.Edu).

Zonally Symmetric, Or Annular, Climate Variability
Is Important For Describing Patterns In Circulation And
Precipitation In Earth’S Atmosphere, But There Has Been
Limited Work To Establish Its Importance For Mars. We
Show That Mars Has Equivalent Annular Modes That Are
More Important For Describing Climate Variability Than
Earth’S Modes. Mars’S Modes Resemble Earth’S With
One That Describes The North-South Movement Of The Jet
Stream And Another That Describes Pulsation Of Waves.
Just As Earth’S Modes Link To Precipitation, Mars’S Annular Modes May Aid Understanding Of Dust Storm Growth.
Annular Modes Are Hemispheric Modes Of Climate
Variability That Result From Internal Atmospheric Dynamics 1;2 . Climate Variability Is “Annular” If Its Structure Of
Variability Is Zonally Symmetric, I.E., If There Are Positive
Covariances Between All Longitudes Of A Given Meteorological Field At A Given Latitude 3 . Through An Investigation Of Annular Dynamics, One Can Get At Many Different Dynamical Phenomena, Including The Jet Stream And
Storm Tracks 4 . Mars Presents A Particularly Peculiar Case
Of Zonal-Mean Dynamics, With Annular Structures Previously Recognized. For Example, Mars’S Polar Vortex Is