The Mars Atmosphere-Ice Coupler MAIC-2 is a simple, latitudinal (zonally averaged) model for the surface temperature, the atmospheric water transport and the surface mass balance (condensation minus evaporation) of water ice. It is driven directly by the orbital parameters obliquity, eccentricity and solar longitude of perihelion.
The underlying physics is mainly explained in the paper by Greve et al. (2010), with minor updates in the presentation by Greve et al. (2012) and the paper by Greve et al. (2026).
Ralf Greve (1,2), Björn Grieger (3), Oliver J. Stenzel (4)
(1) Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
(2) Arctic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
(3) European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
(4) Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany
User manual: in the directory docs/user_manual/
GitHub repository: https://github.com/ragger65/maic2/
MAIC-2 community @ Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/communities/maic2/
MAIC-2 is free and open-source software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Greve, R., B. Grieger and O. J. Stenzel. 2010. MAIC-2, a latitudinal model for the Martian surface temperature, atmospheric water transport and surface glaciation. Planetary and Space Science, 58 (6), 931-940, doi: 10.1016/j.pss.2010.03.002.
Greve, R., B. Grieger and O. J. Stenzel. 2012. Glaciation of Mars from 10 million years ago until 10 million years into the future simulated with the model MAIC-2. Presentation No. PPS03-06, JpGU Meeting, Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan, 24 May 2012, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3698541.
Greve, R., B. Grieger and O. J. Stenzel. 2026. MAIC-2 v2.3: A Fortran program for simulating the surface temperature, atmospheric water transport and surface glaciation of the planet Mars. Planetary Research (submitted).