The Mars Climate Database, version 6.1

The Mars Climate Database (MCD) is a database of meteorological fields derived from General Circulation Model (GCM) numerical simulations of the Martian atmosphere and validated using available observational data. The MCD includes complementary post-processing schemes such as high spatial resolution interpolation of environmental data and means of reconstructing the variability thereof. The GCM that is used to create the MCD data is developed at Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique du CNRS (Paris, France) [1] in collaboration with LATMOS (Paris, France), the Open University (UK), the Oxford University (UK) and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (Spain) with support from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The latest version of the MCD, version 5.3 [2], was released in July 2017, and at the time of writing of this abstract we are working on MCDv6.1, which we will release in May 2022. This new version will benefit from all the recent developments and improvements [1,3-5] in the GCM’s physics package. The MCD is freely distributed and intended to be useful and used in the framework of engineering applications as well as in the context of scientific studies which require accurate knowledge of the state of the Martian atmosphere. Over the years, various versions of the MCD have been released and handed to more than 400 teams around the world. Current applications include entry descent and landing (EDL) studies for future missions, investigations of some specific Martian issues (via coupling of the MCD with homemade codes), analysis of observations (Earth-based as well as with various instruments onboard Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Maven, Trace Gas Orbiter, Hope),... The MCD is freely available upon request via an online form on the dedicated website: http://wwwmars.lmd.jussieu.fr which moreover includes a convenient web interface for quick looks