Mars Orbiter Camera climatology of textured dust storms

Abstract

We report the climatology of “textured dust storms”, those dust storms that have visible structure on their cloud tops that are indicative of active dust lifting, as observed in Mars Daily Global Maps produced from Mars Orbiter Camera wide-angle images. Textured dust storms predominantly occur in the equinox seasons while both solstice periods experience a planet-wide “pause” in textured dust storm activity. These pauses correspond to concurrent decreases in global atmospheric dust opacity. Textured dust storms most frequently occur in Acidalia Planitia, Chryse Planitia, Arcadia Planitia, and Hellas basin. To examine the nature of the link between textured dust storms and atmospheric dust opacity, we compare the textured dust storm climatology with a record of atmospheric dust opacity and find a peak global correlation coefficient of approximately 0.5 with a lag of 20–40° in solar longitude in the opacity compared to the solar climatology. This implies that textured dust storms observed at 1400 local time by MOC are responsible for a large fraction of atmospheric dust opacity and that other mechanisms (e.g., dust devil lifting or storm-scale lifting not observed in this study) may supply a comparable amount of dust.