Abstract
Wind on Mars is a significant agent of contemporary surface change, yet the absence of in situ meteorological data hampers the understanding of surface–atmospheric interactions. Airflow models at length scales relevant to landform size now enable examination of conditions that might activate even small-scale bedforms (ripples) under certain contemporary wind regimes. Ripples have the potential to be used as modern ‘wind vanes' on Mars. Here we use 3D airflow modelling to demonstrate that local dune topography exerts a strong influence on wind speed and direction and that ripple movement likely reflects steered wind direction for certain dune ridge shapes. The poor correlation of dune orientation with effective sand-transporting winds suggests that large dunes may not be mobile under modelled wind scenarios. This work highlights the need to first model winds at high resolution before inferring regional wind patterns from ripple movement or dune orientations on the surface of Mars today.
Highlights
Wind on Mars is a significant agent of contemporary surface change, yet the absence of in situ meteorological data hampers the understanding of surface–atmospheric interactions
We find that winds travelling from the east southeast (ESE) (110°) are the dominant sandtransporting winds, whereas winds from east northeast (ENE) (75°) and west southwest (WSW) (239°) directions appear to play a more subordinate role
We selected three dominant wind directions to model; 239° WSW, 110° ESE and 75° ENE. These winds were identified in earlier work[10] on Proctor Crater as representing the dominant wind regimes indicated from dune slip-face dip orientations
Summary
Wind on Mars is a significant agent of contemporary surface change, yet the absence of in situ meteorological data hampers the understanding of surface–atmospheric interactions. This work highlights the need to first model winds at high resolution before inferring regional wind patterns from ripple movement or dune orientations on the surface of Mars today. This work advocates the use of detailed, high-resolution surface modelling of winds before attempting to understand regional wind patterns from contemporary bedforms on Mars. The poor spatial scale of such circulation model data, has effectively precluded detailed examination of the forcing mechanisms by which windblown features, such as dunes, move on the surface of Mars. This study has shown that detailed 3D modelling of wind on Mars enables us, for the first time, to see the importance of large dune ridge shapes and their complex modification of localized airflow over the surface of Martian dune sites. Wind modelling on a microscale (5 m) provides us with an effective new tool to accompany surface ripple displacement information to help understand dune dynamics on Mars
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