The historic dust storm of 2018 “devoured” the red planet, destroying cold air vortices and bringing an early spring to the southern hemisphere.
(Video: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS).
In June 2018, multiple smaller dust storms combined to form a massive storm that enveloped the entire Mars, obscuring the surface of the red planet from the view of orbiting spacecraft. This phenomenon also “killed” NASA’s Opportunity rover as its solar panels could not receive energy due to the dust cover. New research indicates that the storm even affected the seasons on Mars, causing an abrupt end to winter in the southern hemisphere, Cnet reported on July 24.
“This is a great opportunity to understand how a planet-wide dust storm affects the atmosphere at the Martian poles, where strong winds circulate during winter,” said Paul Streeter, an expert at the Open University (UK).
Streeter and colleagues from the Open University, NASA, and the Russian Academy of Sciences examined data from Mars orbiters and climate models of the red planet to study the storm’s impact on the atmosphere. They found that it caused different effects in the northern and southern hemispheres.
Changes on Mars from May 28 (left) to July 1 (right) during the 2018 dust storm.
The storm pushed a significant amount of dust further south, destroying cold air vortices and bringing an early spring. Meanwhile, the northern hemisphere was not significantly affected, and the seasons there continued as normal.
Streeter presented the new findings at the virtual conference of the Royal Astronomical Society held on July 23. He believes that further detailed studies of Martian dust storms, like the phenomenon in 2018, are very beneficial. “This provides information about the dust deposition processes at the north and south poles and helps us understand more about the climate history of the red planet,” he said.
