Dust storms on Mars can sometimes grow to encompass the entire planet.
NASA lost contact with Opportunity in June of last year due to the severe dust storms that obscured most of the planet's surface.
Ensuring that solar-powered robotic missions continue to operate and future crewed missions can remain safe is dependent on understanding storms and what causes them.
Scientists are looking for seasonal changes that cause dust storms to combine and grow.
In a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Houston, they found that seasonal energy imbalances could be caused by the amount of solar energy absorbed and released by the planet.
The findings could lead to a new understanding of the climate and atmosphere on the red planet.
The research was led by a student at the University of Houston who is a PhD student in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
She was joined by her thesis advisors at the EAS, as well as researchers from NASA and the Universities Space Research Association.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A dust storm on Mars captured by NASA's Mars Color Imager.
The termradiant energy budget refers to the amount of solar energy a planet absorbs from the Sun. This is the most important metric for determining a planet's climate and meteorological cycles.
For the sake of their study, the team combined observations from multiple missions.
This allowed them to model Mars climate and estimate the amount of energy it emits as a function of season, including periods with a global dust storm.
One of the most interesting findings is that more energy being absorbed than produced could be one of the generating mechanisms of dust storms on Mars.
The seeds of the storm were caught in the giant Hellas Basin and in another storm at the northern polar cap when the Hubble Space Telescope imaged Mars in 2001.
There were strong seasonal and daily variations in the amount of solar energy on Mars.
They found evidence of a strong energy imbalance between Mars and Earth. The amount of power emitted globally decreased by 22 percent in the daytime but increased by 29 percent in the nighttime during the planet-encircling 2001 dust storm.
Dr. Germ, a USRA staff scientist at theLPI and a co-author of the paper, explained in a recent USRA press release.
Our results show that current numerical models should be reexamined, as they assume that Mars' energy is balanced between seasons. Our results show a connection between dust storms and energy imbalances and can provide new insights into the generation of dust storms on Mars.
NASA, James Bell, Michael Wolff, and Hubble.
In June 2001 Hubble imaged Mars. Mars is on the right in September. A dust storm that had been raging across the planet for two months obscured the Martian surface.
Our understanding of the Martian climate and atmospheric circulations could be improved by the results of the team. This will be important for future crewed missions to Mars, which NASA and China hope to mount in the coming decade.
Our understanding of Earth's climate could be improved by these findings. Learning more about other planetary environments will lead to a better understanding of our planet.
The paper that describes their findings was recently published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The article was published by Universe Today. The original article is worth a read.
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