Comparison of Simultaneous CO2and H2O Observations of Venus

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Abstract
During the 1972–74 period, 115 pairs Of CO2 and H2O abundance determinations have been made with the coudé scanner of the 2.7 m reflector at McDonald Observatory. These observations were made on 35 days usually within 1–3 h of each other. The pairs of observations were made over the same area of the illuminated disk of Venus with the guiding, seeing and slit-placement errors less than 15% of the disk diameter. A correlation analysis of the pairs of observations grouping them into eight periods of time which corresponded to telescope observing runs or periods of similar phase angle shows a lack of correlation in all except one period. For this set, the H2O abundances were positively correlated with the relative CO2 line strengths for measurements of the 8689 Å CO2 and 7820 Å CO2 bands made on the same day. Comparison of abundances on some 25 individual days shows a positive correlation on one day and a marginal negative correlation on two days with no correlation on the remaining 22 days. On the basis of the lack of correlations, one has to conclude that either the H2O level of line formation does not fluctuate in phase with the observed CO2 absorption fluctuations or the horizontal distribution of the H2O vapor must be inhomogeneous.

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