Intercomparison of Temperature and CO2 Density Profiles from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter Solar Occultations

The vertical structure of the Martian atmosphere is a key constraint for our understanding of the present-day climate of Mars. In recent years, several studies using high-spectral-resolution infrared solar occultation observations from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have provided measurements of vertical profiles of CO 2 density and temperature. In this study, we perform intercomparisons of these datasets to assess their mutual consistency and identify systematic differences. Overall, we find that all datasets exhibit consistent temporal and spatial variability in these parameters, indicating that TGO observations provide a robust picture of the vertical structure of the Martian atmosphere. While the details of the comparisons depend on the specific datasets and altitude ranges considered, differences are generally smaller than 5 K in temperature and 10% in CO 2 density. This study forms part of a broader effort to combine ExoMars TGO and MAVEN observations to improve our understanding of the Martian upper atmosphere. The inter-dataset differences and scaling factors estimated here can be combined with similar metrics derived in companion papers in this collection (Jones et al. 2026; Thiemann et al. 2026) and to relate TGO and MAVEN datasets.