Inter-comparison of Mars Upper Atmosphere Neutral Density and Temperature Datasets from MAVEN

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN spacecraft carries an extensive suite of instruments for characterizing the Mars upper atmosphere. Of these, the NGIMS, IUVS, and EUVM instruments produce datasets for CO₂ density and neutral atmosphere temperature. The different instruments and retrieval methods utilized provide an expansive view of the Mars upper atmosphere. To make full use of the geophysical coverage offered by these datasets, we undertake a systematic comparison of the datasets to understand where they are different and how any biases between datasets can be removed. We conduct pairwise comparisons between datasets, binning the data by geophysical and forcing parameters, to develop adjustment factors that can be used to adjust the measured CO₂ density and neutral temperature of one dataset to nominal agreement with another. The determined adjustment factors are reported for use by the wider Mars aeronomy community.