The seasonal trend in the amount of water vapor in Mars' atmosphere, as
observed by thermal emission spectrometer on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor
orbiter, varies by latitude. This plot starts near the beginning of fall
in the southern hemisphere for the year before the Mars Exploration Rover
mission began and ends on August 30, 2004, slightly more than one martian
year later. Purple represents no water while red represents about 50
precipitable micrometers, which is about 10,000 times less than on Earth.
The units of time along the horizontal axis are given in longitude of the
Sun (Ls) as measured in a Mars-centered coordinate system, a way to
reflect the elliptical nature of Mars' orbit. On this scale, Mars is
farthest from the Sun at about 74, which also corresponds to late fall in
the southern hemisphere.
During the period when Mars is farthest from the Sun, the migration of
water vapor from the northern polar region combines with lowered
atmospheric temperatures to produce conditions that allow formation of
clouds such as seen in the image at PIA07105. Opportunity is further north
than Spirit is, so there is a distinct difference in the amount of water
vapor available to form water-ice clouds over the two sites. To date,
Spirit has not seen any discrete, cirrus-like clouds such as Opportunity
has photographed. Although water vapor is expected to reach a maximum
abundance for the Opportunity and Spirit sites near spring equinox (Ls
180 or about March 2005), the atmospheric temperatures will very likely
have warmed sufficiently to prevent formation of the type of clouds that
Opportunity has observed recently.