FPU2024-Inter-annual climate dynamics of Mars from thickness variation of the seasonal deposits at its polar regions.

The seasonal deposition and sublimation of CO2 snow and frost in the polar regions constitute a major element in the Martian volatile cycle. Although the lateral evolution of seasonal deposits has been extensively mapped using cameras and thermal emission spectrometers, their large-scale thickness evolution has only been examined by using height profiles acquired by the Mars Orbiter Laser altimeter (MOLA). Unfortunately, various factors could bias the MOLA-derived estimates. More importantly, the MOLA dataset is temporally limited to 1999 and 2001, a little more than one Mars year, preventing its use to examine inter-annual climate dynamics of Mars. We have conducted an experiment measuring shadows variations of ice blocks resulting in the successful determination of the polar cap thickness variation. We propose to extend this experiment.