Today’s weather report on Mars: Windy with a chance of catastrophic dust storms blotting out the sky.
In a new study, planetary scientists at CU Boulder have begun to unravel the factors that kick off major dust storms on Mars—weather events that sometimes engulf the entire planet in swirling grit.
The team discovered that relatively warm and sunny days may help to trigger them.Heshani Pieris, lead author of the study, said the findings are a first step toward forecasting extreme weather on Mars, just like scientists do on Earth.
“Dust storms have a significant effect on rovers and landers on Mars, not to mention what will happen during future crewed missions to Mars,” said Pieris, a graduate student at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder. “This dust is very light and sticks to everything.”
She will present the results Tuesday, Dec. 10 at the 2024 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.
To put dust storms under the magnifying glass, the researchers drew on real observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite.
So far, they have identified weather patterns that may underly roughly two-thirds of the major dust storms on Mars. You won’t see Mars weather reporters standing in front of a green screen just yet, but it’s a step in the right direction, said study co-author Paul Hayne.
“We need to understand what causes some of the smaller or regional storms to grow into global-scale storms,” said Hayne, a researcher at LASP and associate professor at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “We don’t even fully understand the basic physics of how dust storms start at the surface.”Dusty demise
Dust storms on Mars are something to behold.
Many begin as smaller storms that swirl around the ice caps at the planet’s north and south poles, usually during the second half of the Martian year. (A year on Mars lasts 687 Earth days). Those storms can grow at a furious pace, pressing toward the equator until they cover millions of square miles and last for days.
The 2015 film The Martian starring Matt Damon featured one such apocalyptic storm that knocked over a satellite dish and tossed around astronauts. The reality is less cinematic. Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, so dust storms on the Red Planet can’t generate much force. But they can still be trouble.
In 2018, for example, a global dust storm buried the solar panels on NASA’s Opportunity rover under a layer of dust. The rover died not long after.
“Even though the wind pressure may not be enough to knock over equipment, these dust grains can build up a lot of speed and pelt astronauts and their equipment,” Hayne said.
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