NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and ESA's Mars Express captured images of a series of dust storms at the northern polar cap boundary on Mars in springtime in 2019. Per Gizmodo's report, planetary scientists analyzed those images and found clouds of dust on Mars that formed similarly to water vapor clouds on Earth despite having different atmospheres.
Clouds on Earth are voluminous collections of water vapor, forming because of the water cycle and the atmosphere. However, the Martian atmosphere is colder than Earth's and is only 1% as dense.
Discovering Earth-like clouds on the Red Planet is an extraordinary find that is explored in the paper, titled "Cellular Patterns and Dry Convection in Textured Dust Storms at the Edge of Mars North Polar Cap," published in the journal Icarus.
Dust Storms on Mars in Spring 2019
The two orbiters recorded two dust storms that happened on Mars' North Pole in the spring of 2019, a period of high dust storm activity on the Red Planet.
The Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) images show dust storms occurring and disappearing in repeated cycles, while the High-Resolution Stereo Camera recorded spiral shapes that are between 62 and 1,243 miles (100 and 2,000 kilometers) long, bearing similarities to the extratropical cyclones found on Earth's mid and polar latitudes.
Colin Wilson, ESA's Mars Express project scientist, said in a statement that it is quite unexpected to see clouds on the Red Planet that are similar to Earth's moist hot, and very un-Mars-like tropical regions by just tracking the chaotic movement of dust storms.
Furthermore, IFL Science reported that researchers found that the dust cloud could reach approximately 4 to 7 miles (6 to 11 kilometers) above the ground. Agustín Sánchez-Levaga who leads the VMC science team and the lead author of the paper said that the images show the completed yet organized structures of these clouds as fronts and cellular convection patterns can emerge.
The findings show the significance of monitoring dust storms on Mars, especially in informing solar-powered missions like InSight to survive the conditions on the Red Planet.
How Did the Dust Clouds Form on Mars?
The authors wrote that the images also reveal that the texture of the clouds on both planets is the same as the dust storms created by regularly-spaced cloud cells arranged like pebbles.
They explained that the rising air on Earth contains water and then condenses to form clouds. But on Mars, the air contains dust rather than water. The Sun's heat causes the dust-laden air to rise and form dusty cells that are surrounded by areas of sinking air that have less dust, giving rise to the granular pattern also seen on Earth's clouds.
According to Sci-News, the Martian wind blows over the cloud features at about 140km/h, causing the shape of the cells to elongate toward the direction of the wind. This proves that despite the chaotic and dynamic atmosphere both planets have, nature creates orderly patterns.
More so, these observations are not unique to Earth and Mars as previous observations reveal that the Venutian atmosphere also shows similar patterns. The study is another example of the value of comparative studies of similar phenomena occurring in planetary atmospheres to better understand the mechanisms behind them under different conditions.
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