New Delhi: While examining the seasonal patterns of Mars, NASA revealed stunning pictures of a seasonal dust storm pattern on the surface of Red Planet.
After decades of research NASA scientists discovered three distinct regional storms occurring consecutively at approximately the same times of a year, during summer and spring in the southern hemisphere.
“When we look at the temperature structure instead of the visible dust, we finally see some regularity in the large dust storms,” said lead study author David Kass of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
According to the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters , temperature records from NASA Mars orbiters reveal a pattern of three types of large regional dust storms occurring in sequence at about the same time each year during the southern hemisphere spring and summer. Each Martian year lasts about two Earth years.
“Recognising a pattern in the occurrence of regional dust storms is a step toward understanding the fundamental atmospheric properties controlling them,” Kass said.
The NASA researchers used data from the Mars Climate Sounder on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Thermal Emission Spectrometer on Mars Global Surveyor to analyse temperature data of a broad layer about 25 km above the Martian surface.
Most Martian dust storms are localised, smaller than about 2,000 km across and dissipating within a few days. Some become regional, affecting up to a third of the planet and persisting up to three weeks.
The US space agency differentiated these large storms as A, B and C.
(With Agency inputs)
