On Earth, the temperature regime is such that water is generally fairly close to its freezing point, and thus relatively small differences in climate affect how much snow and ice are present and whether or not the snow covering will be seasonal or last from one year to the next. On Mars, as on Earth, the presence of ice also plays a role in large‐scale climate processes and it is important in controlling the abundance of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water vapor. Passive microwave radiometry has been used to derive snow extent and snow depth on Earth, where scattering by snow (H₂O) crystals is the dominant effect on the microwave radiation emanating from the ground and emerging from the snowpack. Microwave remote sensing may also prove to be useful for assessing the coverage and thickness of the frozen H₂O and CO₂ on Mars, but more exact information is needed on how both H₂O crystals and frozen CO₂ crystals scatter and absorb passive microwave radiation. In this study, CO₂ crystals have been produced in a laboratory cold chamber with temperature conditions similar to those found on the polar caps of Mars, and detailed three‐dimensional images of their size and shape have been made with a low‐temperature scanning electron microscope. Unlike the much larger H₂O snow crystals found on Earth, which typically range in size between 0.1 mm and 1.0 mm (radius), CO₂ crystals are differently shaped and considerably smaller. Bipyramid crystals (base to base four‐sided pyramids) are commonly observed, some as small as 1.0 μm. A discrete dipole model was employed to calculate the passive microwave radiation scattered and absorbed by crystals of various sizes and shapes. Modeling results indicate that the shape of the crystal, whether for frozen CO₂ or H₂O, is of little consequence in affecting extinction efficiency. However, owing to their smaller size, frozen CO₂ crystals are more emissive than the H₂O crystals in the 37 GHz region of the microwave spectrum. For the larger sizes of the modeled crystals, scattering dominates over absorption since the particles approach the size of the wavelength. The scattering values are 2 orders of magnitude larger than absorption for the 900 μm size snow particles. For CO₂ crystals of 3.0 μm in size, absorption is 7 orders of magnitude greater than scattering.

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