Related papers: Thermal creep assisted dust lifting on Mars: Wind …
The illuminated dusty surface of Mars acts like a gas pump. It is driven by thermal creep at low pressure within the soil. In the top soil layer this gas flow has to be sustained by a pressure gradient. This is equivalent to a lifting force…
Dust and sand motion are a common sight on Mars. Understanding the interaction of atmosphere and Martian soil is fundamental to describe the planet's weather, climate and surface morphology. We set up a wind tunnel to study the lift of a…
At low ambient pressure, temperature gradients in porous soil lead to a gas flow, called thermal creep. With this regard, Mars is a unique as the conditions for thermal creep to occur in natural soil only exist on this planet in the solar…
We carried out wind tunnel experiments on parabolic flights with 100 $\mu$m Mojave Mars simulant sand. The experiments result in shear stress thresholds and erosion rates for varying g-levels at 600 Pa pressure. Our data confirm former…
The wind-driven hopping motion of sand grains, known as saltation, forms dunes and ripples and ejects fine dust particles into the atmosphere on both Earth and Mars. While the wind speed at which saltation is initiated, the fluid threshold,…
Aeolian sediment transport is observed to occur on Mars as well as other extraterrestrial environments, generating ripples and dunes as on Earth. The search for terrestrial analogues of planetary bedforms, as well as environmental…
Much of the surface of Mars is covered by dunes, ripples, and other features formed by the blowing of sand by wind, known as saltation. In addition, saltation loads the atmosphere with dust aerosols, which dominate the Martian climate. We…
Insolation of the Martian soil leads to a sub-surface overpressure due to thermal creep gas flow. This could support particle entrainment into the atmosphere. Short time shadowing e.g. by the traverse of a larger dust devil would enhance…
A diagnosis of the Ar densities measured by the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer aboard the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) and the temperatures derived from these densities shows that solar activity, solar insolation,…
Lifting dust and sand into the thin Martian atmosphere is a challenging problem. Atmospheric pressure excursions within dust devils have been proposed to support lifting. We verify this idea in laboratory experiments. Pressure differences…
It is a long-standing open question whether electrification of wind-blown sand due to tribocharging - the generation of electric charges on the surface of sand grains by particle-particle collisions - could affect rates of sand transport…
Global and mesoscale models represent the background (slowly varying) winds on Mars, but short timescale wind variability is not explicitly represented. The local wind erosion and dust deposition model can be useful for more accurate local…
Airborne dust plays an active role in determining the thermal structure and chemical composition of the present-day atmosphere of Mars and possibly the planet's climate evolution over time through radiative--convective and cloud…
Characterizing the Martian atmosphere is an essential objective to understand its meteorology and its climate. The lower atmosphere (< 40 km) and middle atmosphere (40-80 km) of Mars appear dynamically coupled at much higher levels than in…
We report wind measurements within Martian dust devils observed in plan view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) orbiting Mars. The central color swath of the HiRISE instrument has three separate charge-coupled…
We present results from the Met Office Unified Model (UM), a world-leading climate and weather model, adapted to simulate a dry Martian climate. We detail the adaptation of the basic parameterisations and analyse results from two…
Terraforming Mars can be evaluated with a set of system-level constraints linking (i) target pressures & compositions to required atmospheric inventories, (ii) target surface temperatures to the required radiative control, (iii) inventories…
Saltation threshold, the minimum wind speed for sediment transport, is a fundamental parameter in aeolian processes. The presence of liquid, such as water on Earth or methane on Titan, may affect the threshold values to a great extent.…
Surface release of radiatively active particles, with high infrared- (IR-)to-visible extinction ratios, has been proposed as a method of warming Mars. However, to warm Mars using aerosols, particles released locally must disperse globally.…
Atmospheric dust plays an important role on the terrestrial climate, regulating the amount of solar radiation coming to the surface, affecting the development and the life time of the clouds and providing fundamental nutrients to the growth…